14 DAY TRIAL // A leading Sony executive has said that the marketing campaign for the Microsoft-made Kinect motion tracking system has not overshadowed the promotional efforts his own company devoted to the PlayStation Move device and that the substance of the devices and not the hype from marketing will determine the future of the motion tracking market.
Andrew House, who is the leader of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, has told MCV that his company has experience with camera-based motion tracking and, “We learnt from that experience that there are limitations around a camera-only solution. It does work well and lend itself to certain genres, but you do tend to hit a bit of a wall when trying to support it with the broadest range of content available. That’s not the sort of problem we have with Move.”
He added, “Consumers have understood Move is something that could impact a wide range of games. This is opposed to what I think may dog the competition to a degree, which is basing it solidly around just a family experience – and one that is harder to adapt into traditional game genres.”
Microsoft was the company that has thrown more funds into the pre-launch campaign for the Kinect motion tracking device, even showing it off on the very popular Oprah television show.
Sony is saying that the PlayStation Move has managed to move more than 4 million units to shops, suggesting that there's a healthy degree of demand for it, which is apparently more interesting to European gamers.
By contrast Microsoft has announced that Kinect has managed to sell 2.5 million units in its first 25 days on sales.
Both companies are eager to show off their devices as being commercial successes in the hope that gamers who are now picking up a new console will prefer the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3 over the Nintendo Wii, which has long held the edge in the current generation sales charts.