The PlayStation Move is Sony's answer to the motion control trend. It uses a digital camera called the PlayStation Eye to track the movement of a new controller stuffed with gyroscopes and sensors and magic—all of it topped with a glowing plastic ball.
It's been over a week since my Move review hardware arrived, and I've played games with a variety of people just to gauge their reactions. When holding one of the Move controllers for the first time, everyone seems to have one instinctive response: they give that ball on the top a good, hard squeeze, like it's a clown nose.
The ball doesn't light up until you have the PlayStation Eye turned on and a game begins. Then it glows brightly, and the changing color of the ball often provides in-game information. The glowing ball also adds an extra helping of surrealism to some titles; playing archery, it was almost distracting to have that glowing pink orb so close to my face. During dark sections, I could see the glowing ball reflected on the screen of my television.
The ball sometimes cycles slowly between different colors. At other times it pulses. You can feel the motor inside the force feedback mechanism move in time to the light, as though you're holding the heart of some mechanical, bio-luminescent beast. If you have kids, you are screwed during play time; anyone from the ages of ten on down will gravitate towards that glowing ball, and they won't want to let go. My baby wants to gum on it constantly, while my older kids wave it around like they're at a pre-pubescent rave.
The PlayStation Move is here, ladies and gentleman, and it's pretty damn great.
The Hardware
Instead of relying on smoke, mirrors, and marketing, Sony simply sent the press two Move controllers, a Navigation controller, and a stack of games to play. The variety of games on display here, and the wide range of audiences being engaged, is impressive. Even with a week or two to review the games and the hardware, it was tough to play through everything and to come back with impressions. (We'll be offering more thoughts in the coming days.)
The Move itself is lighter than you might expect, although it feels good in the hand. It features a large central button on the top of the controller (the Move button) and a trigger on the bottom that acts like the shoulder buttons on a Dual Shock 3 (games call this the "T" button). The ball atop the controller is made of plastic that can be squished, as we've noted, although it's attached securely to the hardware. The ball can glow in a surprisingly extensive array of colors.
This Move button is surrounded by the normal PlayStation face buttons, and the arrangement is just different enough from a normal controller that I found myself looking down when asked to hit a specific button. Putting these buttons around the Move button in a diamond shape to correspond with the cardinal directions would have made more sense (see the proposal above), and it would have better correlated with the controls we're used to. Sadly, they never ask me about things like that.
The Start and Select button are on the sides of the controller, near the top and along the seam, and these are the only buttons that are actively uncomfortable to press. The PlayStation button is indented, so you won't accidentally hit it and drop yourself out of the game. Other than the issue with the arrangement of buttons, the controller is well laid out and comfortable.
The secondary Navigation controller is exactly what you would expect: the buttons feel good, although the analog trigger is a little squishier than both the Move and the standard controllers.
Lag and battery life
Yes, there's noticeable lag in every game and demo we tried, although in all cases you get used to it quickly; this isn't a deal breaker. It's also variable; some games have more lag than others, which means you talented developers will be able to minimize the issue in software. In one game we played, the lag felt different in a section designed specifically for the PlayStation 3 than it did in older code.
This is just something inherent to motion controls: whether it's the Wii, the Move, or Kinect, you're going to see some lag, and it's going to be better in some games than others.
Battery life with the built-in pack is shorter than the Dual Shock 3, although not to an annoying degree. I've burned down a single charge in a few days of heavy play, and you recharge the controller using a standard USB to micro-USB cable (the same as the Dual Shocks). It's nice, but if a controller dies it would be convenient just to slam in fresh batteries. However, that's more preference than flaw. If you're playing multiplayer games, though, you'll want to stock up on USB cables or buy a charging station.
Remember to check the status of your charge by hitting the PlayStation button and you shouldn't go completely dry if you plan accordingly.
The hardware is well-designed, and feels comfortable to use for long periods of time, but what about the games? We were given access to a number of full, retail games, along with patches for existing games and downloadable titles. Don't consider the following to be full reviews of the games being discussed; instead, these are our thoughts on just how well the motion controls have been implemented.
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