Wada: Motion control games â??difficult to designâ??

Yoichi Wada is sceptical of the popular claim that motion control is the biggest new frontier for game design.

The long-time Square Enix president described Natal and Sony’s motion controller as an “extension of the gaming function”, and not a central pillar to the consoles’ offering.

“Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine,” Wada told the FT.

“Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small.”

Wada added that compelling software may heighten the impact motion controllers have on the console market, but was reported as saying that games which use motion control are “quite difficult to design”.

Wada did however applaud Microsoft’s upcoming motion control system, Project Natal. “As a user interface it’s fantastic,” he said, “and I think it will become standard.”