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Microsoft and Sony’s upcoming motion control technologies have been heralded as the future of video gaming, but not every developer is convinced.
One such sceptic is 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa producer Simon Humber, who isn’t sold on Natal and PlayStation Move – when it comes to football games.
“It’s tough to apply it to football games,” he told VideoGamer.com.
“The things you can do on the pad, especially in terms of the exotic moves you can do on the pad, replicating that using motion and your body’s interpretation of what that move is, is challenging, and I’m not sure it’s fun. It would probably be quite fatiguing. If you’re trying to kick and head every ball – we have a product called Active [EA Sports Active] which helps you do that as well.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that we won’t see motion control incorporated into the FIFA series in the future. How does bending it like Beckham or taking a long throw like Rory Delap sound?
“I’m not sure you could really come up with a good football simulation doing that,” said Humber, “I’m sure you could come up with aspects of football you could do. Maybe you take a bunch of free kicks and you have to Bend it Like Beckham, to throw a cliché out there, or you try and do Rory Delap long throws onto someone’s head, or play the part of taking penalties or saving penalties. You could probably package up various parts of the game, but actually for a full 90 minute experience, I’m not convinced it would be possible to do a good job on that.”
So, which is better for football games: Natal or PlayStation Move?
“The full body motion gives you richer possibilities,” said Humber. “But the fatiguing aspect is a big challenge. Expecting someone to be on their feet for 90 virtual minutes, kicking and heading every ball, that’s going to be tough! We’ll be giving people heart attacks if we were trying to get them to do that. So packaging up various moments is probably the way forward there.”
While the idea of getting up off the couch and taking a pretend free kick sounds like fun, don’t expect to be doing it anytime soon. Humber poured cold water on the suggestion that motion control may be added to 2010 FIFA World Cup after its release.
“Possible? Probably. Desirable? Unlikely,” said Humber. “To craft a good experience you need to be working with that controller all the way through your development. That support would go out with the product in the first place. Otherwise anything post-release would just have that feeling of being tacked on and it’s not fully integrated into the product, it’s not particularly well thought out perhaps. When that happens, if it happens, it would happen with the core product in the first place.”
FIFA 11 maybe?
“Maybe. I’ve never heard of this FIFA 11! Who’s it by?”
Someone called David Rutter [main FIFA series line producer].
“Rutter. That rings a bell. Oh yeah, I know him.”
2010 FIFA World Cup is out on April 30. Check out the latest previews, screens and trailers on our game page.
