Key to Playstation Move’s success: Online

I’m sure many will agree with me who watched the GDC Sony conference last night that I couldn’t help but feel slightly underwhelmed. In fact some of the tech that was shown off at E3 2009 got me more excited but since the Wii Motion Plus is now in full circulation, it kind of took the hype off of Move a little bit. As for Sony’s decision to call it Move, it won’t bring any prizes for originality however at least it makes sense, unlike Wii. Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about today was where Sony need to ‘Move’ to make it a success and that is online.

To suggest that Sony will capture a core casual audience with this device is a little optimistic. Those already allured by the world of motion would now have already taken the plunge with the Nintendo Wii. Allot of that catchment will also feel slightly disillusioned by the experience as Nintendo’s machine has been swamped with rubbish shovel ware and a novelty that has gone cold. Whilst what we saw from Sony last night was very much a living room affair, where they can be successful with their existing loyal customer base is by offering something that Nintendo just can’t get right. The online aspect of motion based game devices.

Imagine competing online in a motion controlled Olympics game. Competitors will compete across the world in tournaments and leader boards for supremacy. Now, we know that Deca Sports 2 was an online enabled game for the Wii but that game wasn’t very good, had the wrong choice of sports and had a poor online infrastructure, let alone poor sales figures. Sony have the opportunity in filling the void in gaming, the opportunity for casual gamers to cross the divide online and play against others, whether it be by themselves or team based. How many times do you play Wii Sports? Only when friends are round, I’m guessing? If you implement an online competition arena you are opening yourselves up from being more than just a novelty, you are making your peripheral become a more every day usable addition to your Playstation experience. Sony are in a much stronger position in terms of online infrastructure than what Nintendo are and if it plays it’s cards right it could be on to a major successful killer app. If they fail to utilise on the online components I’m afraid this peripheral is very much destined to fail.

From what we’ve seen of Playstation Move thus far is interesting, Sony Sports Champions is shaping up to be a good rival to Wii Sports Resort and already the Table Tennis looks more accurate, obviously more realistic and hopefully will have a structure that keeps you playing, trophies anyone? What Sony are doing isn’t original and nor should they try and fabricate what they are doing is, they should build upon the phenomenal success of the Wii and trounce it with games that have substance and interactivity. Whether Sony will choose to do this is up to them. As we’ve seen we’ve been shouting out for in game voice chat and that still hasn’t materialised, let’s hope Sony don’t make the same mistake with Playstation Move. Someone call up THQ to make a bowling game with an online league system!