E3 Motion Wars: My 10 Year Old Cousin on Kinect, Move, 3DS & Wii - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 21 June 2010 / 4,846 Views
After E3 2010 ended, I visited my family in Los Angeles. During my visit, I showed my cousin, who is male and 10 years old trailers for major E3 titles. He is basically a pretty normal kid who likes video games – so I showed him the major highlights of the coming "motion wars" to get his perspective. Essentially, I showed off 2-4 titles motion titles from E3 that I saw, titles which show off the 3DS, Kinect, Move and Wii technology real well. I recorded his reactions secretly as I showed off the games to him for the first time, and am transcribing them below (with his permission).
I began with Wii, before moving to 3DS, X360 Kinect, and then PS3 Move. My cousin has a Wii and a PSP but he is familiar with other systems. His neighbor has an X360 and his best friend has a PS3. He routinely asks me about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Halo Wars, and Little Big Planet. I refer him to Google. He is also familiar with 3D technology from movies - he enjoyed the effects of 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'. Beyond that, he is familiar with Iphone gaming and flash based gaming - but he lacks the knowledge of franchises and industry trends and transitions you see on a gaming community like this.
The first trailer I showed my cousin was Epic Mickey, a platformer from Disney for Wii which uses a paintbrush and erasing mechanic. Without any prompting he said "this reminds me of Max & The Magic Marker", a WiiWare game where smaller objects can be drawn into the game. The idea of playing in a cartoon and being able to change it with a Wii-mote paintbrush still appears to have some potential though, as his eyes lit up as he saw mechanics extend beyond what he had expected. He asked me why the style was "so dark" and I told him that Mickey Mouse used to be an edgy icon before he became really cute - so Disney was trying to bring him back to that. When asked for a final assessment he said "it looks like its fun but I don't need it since I have Max & The Magic Marker". He didn't seem to think the game offered anything new, but he did believe it would be 'really cool' to play in classic animation scenes.
With that first assessment out of the way I went in a completely different direction. I told him to close his eyes as I pulled up a video on Youtube showing a trailer and game play of NBA Jam. When he saw the words "NBA Jam" pop up he said "I don't like basketball!" - but his stance soon softened after seeing the ridiculous blocks, jumps, calls, fires and slam dunks of the game. As he saw adult players trash talk each other in an E3 game play video while performing ridiculous back flip style slam dunks with their Wii remotes he broke out laughing. "What is Boom-shakala?" he asked after a while and I soon realized that my cousin, despite going to arcades in Santa Monica his entire life - and playing a lot of sports - had no idea what NBA Jam was. For the final assessment, he said "buy this so I can beat you". That says it all, considering this is a kid from LA who didn't know the Lakers had just won game seven of the NBA Finals - which had caused a celebratory riot near our E3 hotel – but still wanted the game.
For Wii, I also showed off Just Dance 2. He said the "dancing looks kind of fun but its too hard" for me. When asked why it looked hard, he said he didn't think he could move fast enough to keep up with the beat. As the video played, his cat and dog also sprinted down the hallway behind us, so he added "we don't have enough room for that game either!” The next morning, my other Los Angeles cousin, a three year old girl saw the trailer and tried to imitate the video. She fell on her bum and cried…loudly. In his final assessment of the game play and trailers "only hot middle school girls" will buy Just Dance 2 because “they like to show off and older girls go to real dances,” or so he says.
As a Wii owner, my cousin was only really impressed by NBA Jam for its effective over the top use of motion controls - which he had no experience with before. Epic Mickey and Just Dance 2 didn’t really appeal to him too much. Had I shown him Donkey Kong, Kirby, and Sonic Colors he probably would have been happier, but this piece is intended to assess his reaction to motion control games, so I didn’t bother.
On the 3DS side, after explaining the technological limits of our computer screen for showing 3D, I showed Kid Icarus and Pilotwings Resort. For both titles he asked about the controls. I told him that the game space could be "rotated" and that Pilotwings in particular let you travel anywhere. He said he could see that Pilotwings felt like "real flying" even in 2D, but also noted that the “3DS graphics look like good graphics on PSP and Iphone games”. When I asked him if he could tell by the 3DS game ads and graphics if he could see what parts might be 3D, he pointed to areas of the computer monitor that were in fact in 3D on the 3DS demos. After showing off the two demos, he wanted to see more, and expressed disappointment when I told him those were the best ones for demonstrating 3D without a 3D screen. When I told him 3DS would be able to play 3D movies on 3DS he didn’t seem too impressed – “PSP does more than games but I mostly use it for Sonic” he said. Overall, it looks like he has some interest in 3DS, but he will need to be sold on the 3D tech for game play, because the graphics alone won’t justify a purchase for him. Titles shown off at the show that I mentioned, like Metal Gear, Kid Icarus, Animal Crossing, and Samurai Warriors are meaningless to him.
With the 3DS out of the way, I showed my cousin four demonstrations / game play trailers for X360 Kinect and PS3 move. Watching his reactions to games available for Kinect was fascinating even though it was after I explained it was a camera-based and controller free system before showing anything to him. Dance Central was the first up and he had a similar reaction to the Just Dance 2 trailer. He said “this looks even harder than the other game. Now I have to get my legs and body to move right too! He did add that the “way the body moves is showing up perfectly” for the game – which appears to have been the general consensus of E3 attendees.
Next, we looked at Kinectimals. He said “Why would I want this? I have real pets” and towards the end of the trailer “it looks kind of young and girly for me too, but it is cute”. When I asked him if he had ever heard of Nintendogs, which is somewhat similar, he said he knew girls who had it. He said he didn’t like games where “you have no goal”, even if they “control really good [well] like Kinectimals”.
After that, we looked at Child of Eden. Ten seconds in he said “the graphics are incredible but it looks kind of boring”. What was boring about it? He replied “if I’m going to wave around it needs to be for a realistic activity” – and as stated above, for a goal. When I told him this was sort of artistic display for Kinect, he simply said “people play games for fun, and this doesn’t look fun to me”.
We finished up with Kinect Adventure. About twenty seconds into the trailer he said “this is pretty cool, but I don’t know if I’d be able to play for very long”. Why not? He replied “it’s too much like hard sports or games; you have to worry about yourself more than the game”. Overall, as with the 3DS, my cousin appeared to be impressed by the potential and technology of Kinect, but he said he’d be fine “playing these games at my neighbor’s house if he got them” instead of buying an X360 for the technology.
Lastly, I showed off PS3 Move demos and trailers. I explained that the Move was sort of a reverse-engineered Wii in terms of motion controls, using light and a basic camera at opposite points as Wii does. Whereas the Wii sensor bar sends out infrared light for the Wii remote to catch to determine distance, the Move uses light on its controller and a camera by the TV. I started him off with a demo / trailer video for Sorcery. Being able to “feel like a wizard is pretty cool” he said, but he added “someone could do that for Wii right?” He was very impressed by the ability to switch spells quickly, saying it would be “cool to fight a boss with that magic wand feeling”. He said he thinks “my best friend will probably get this, because he likes Harry Potter stuff and we’ll play it a lot probably”.
I followed Sorcery with Tiger Woods Move. He really liked the way the controller moved with Tiger Wood’s club but he said “it feels like the golf stuff in Wii Sports or [Wii Sports] Resort with better graphics”. When I asked him if that was enough he said “only if it’s more fun and prettier. Both would be enough. One isn’t. Probably won’t play it”. Part of that seems to just be his feeling on golf – “even if this Golf game was like that NBA game it probably wouldn’t be fun since it’s not competitive”.
With that in mind, I showed him Sports Championship. He stayed silent for most of the trailer, and asked at the end “did they just copy Nintendo for this one?” and added shortly afterwards “I don’t need this after Wii Sports”. I didn’t really know what to say to that so I pulled up the next trailer. He rolled his eyes as he said it though, so he probably doesn’t want it.
We finished with Move Party. During the trailer he said it “looks like they mixed the Rayman games [for Wii] and Adventure [for Kinect], so it’s pretty cool”. He then noted “the ad looks like Wii ads”. Would my cousin want it if he had a Move? “Maybe, but I’m still addicted to my Rayman game!”
Overall, Move probably would have appealed to my cousin more if Wii didn’t already exist. He generally liked the games, but saw no reason to think they were better than his Wii games. Some of the Move content will unquestionably appeal to him, and I don’t doubt that he will play Sorcery and other interesting titles, but on the whole the massive motion-control library that already exists for Wii means my cousin doesn’t see a need to make his parents buy a PS3 with Move.
To sum it up, based on the top motion-titles coming for Kinect, Move, and Wii, and a couple 3DS games, my cousin is somewhat interested in titles for each. He was most impressed by NBA Jam, Sorcery, Kinect Adventure, and Pilotwings Resort. Epic Mickey, Sports Champions, and Move Party were all similar to experiences he had already played, so he wasn’t too impressed with any of them, despite liking similar experiences. The two dance games, and Kinectimals were not interesting to my cousin due to the nature of their game play – too complex, and too simple respectively. Kid Icarus, Child of Eden, and Tiger Woods also didn’t really appeal to his gaming tastes, even though he was clearly impressed with the visuals for each game (3D for Icarus, and overall for other two).
My impression after showing him Wii games, Move, Kinect, and 3DS games is that Wii is really the only system offering games in the genres he likes at the moment, partly because he is just sinking his teeth into its library after getting a Wii last December. Move and 3DS do appeal to him on potential, but they don’t seem to have enough content yet to make him want either device. Kinect interested him quite a bit when used well, but he doesn’t seem to see it as a device that has a lot of content for him, at least right now. As a final experiment I threw in one last variable. I said, “If you had $800 to spend in the next year, and these systems and major games (along with others) were out what would you buy?” I told him that 3DS would probably cost $200-$250, PS3 + Move would probably cost $400, and X360 Slim + Kinect would probably cost $400-$450. I also mentioned that games for Wii and PSP, the systems he has, cost $50 and $40 respectively most of the time. He said he would buy “the NBA thing, Sorcery, Move Party and Move for my best friend [the best friend has a PS3] and me, 3DS and a couple games for me, and maybe some more Wii and PSP games!” More realistically, I think he gets $200-$300 to spend on video games per year, as do most people in this country, and so with Kinect, 3DS, and Move to be expensive, he’d probably just buy more Wii and PSP games until he runs out of stuff to play. If the mass-market behaves similarly to my cousin, then the pricing for Move and Kinect may be prohibitive for most gaming budgets, or at least kids gaming budgets.
Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
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The reason you should care about this people is that, 10 year olds is one type of group that Sony is targetting with this Move, so what else than to hear it from a 10-year old who knows what he's talking about?
@dirkd
I get what you're saying about the games demo'd, but it's a TEN YEAR OLD CHILD. Have you possibly imagined that maybe, just maybe, someone is actually being a parent out there and NOT allowing their kid to play games where they gun down people until s/he's old enough to handle it? SOCOM? Killzone? RE5? Think about it.
It's just a perspective. An interesting one. The idea is to have someone who isn't tainted by all the fanboy crap going back and forth (ala 16-17 year olds) but instead is a little more innocent -- more of a fresh perspective (except for the girly games bit -- boo modern culture).
and "really" demoing the lineup? Don't get me wrong, the move has a good lineup and I hope the experience delivers -- but the same thing could be said about the selected Wii or 360 games (not so much 3DS).
"The 10 year old kid really did not get a very good demo of the move, How about Socom 3, or Killzone 3 with motion and real 3D, or RE5, and other killer PS3 exclusives the move is playing on, The Force Unleashed 2 will soon have a killer app for move, which will be amazing, so PS move is the real deal, if your going to demo it, then really demo it, it has so much to offer."
why should we care what your ten year old cousin thinks? I asked my nephew what he thought of this post. He said it was lengthy and not worth the read.
Does LittleBigPlanet 2 not use the Move? I would have at least showed up GT5 or LBP to a 10 year old instead of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11.
The thing that people need to see though is Move is NOT going to bring about nothing but Wii ports.
Most of the games i've seen are going to be rated T or M.
Socom 4, KillZone 3 and The Fight: Lights Out would be the new games that are supported by Move that will get M's. Maybe not The Fight. Depends of bloody it gets.
But I'm actually happy about Move. It has a wide variety of games coming.
"Sorcery, Move Party and Move for my best friend [the best friend has a PS3] and me,"
then he needs 2motes+chuck and will be overbudget...
If this is only a 10-year old's first impressions of the Move (i.e. the dildo controller (and nav controller)) then it's not really a true first impression of PS3 motion controls. The PSEye is certainly not as sophisticated as Kinect, but it brings motion control functionality to the PS3 in a way that has been integrated with the Move controller, but is independant of the Move controller. The most obvious examples are The Fight, and Eyepet. I wonder what your cousin's initial impressions of PS3 motion controls would be if you also mentioned the significant feature of head tracking (used in The Fight, and GT5). From the perspective of a current Wii owner the ability for PS3 (through the PSEye) to track your head movements is a substantial and obvious difference between the PS3 motion control system and the Wii motion control system, which has been implemented into at least some of the upcoming Move titles.
@Richardhutnik
Nah man getting up and moving around isn't hard to do but most people don't want to move around like that when it comes to gaming. Its not a case of being hard but more like we couldn't be bothered. At least with the Wii and PS Move theres games you can play comfortably sitting on your armchair.
I'm reading a lot of gross misconceptions on the vocabulary and intelligence of 10 year olds. Words like realistic and complex aren't above their understanding.
Interesting article. Dragged on a bit and some pictures would definitely ease the wall of text but some good stuff is in there.
Wow, this article is so fake. Is full of verbal fillers in the right situations. Really people?
Wow, so getting up and moving one's body is now hard? Do we have a generation that is now lazy? I wonder how many would be able to get to the top of something Teddy Roosevelt said that if a nation couldn't get to the top of, it would be doomed.
Opinion of a 10 year old kid is a good perspective, only problem is there not the one spending the money, I love games I own a 360 and PS3, In my opinion the only one that will do well is the PS move, I have developers in the family, and I may be working for Lucas Arts as a tester here very soon, but what the PS move can do is much more advanced then the Wii, The 10 year old kid really did not get a very good demo of the move, How about Socom 3, or Killzone 3 with motion and real 3D, or RE5, and other killer PS3 exclusives the move is playing on, The Force Unleashed 2 will soon have a killer app for move, which will be amazing, so PS move is the real deal, if your going to demo it, then really demo it, it has so much to offer. Maybe 17-19 year olds are another very good age to look at because most play games, and most have jobs, and they are buying there own gaming equipment, Natal, Kinect what ever its called now may be good in the future but for now I don.t see it doing very well, the whole pet thing is good for 4-5 year old girls, but lets get real how many parents are going to spend 150 bucks on this, PS move gives you the best of all 3 worlds, Wii, Xbox since it can do everything natal can do , mixed with stunning HD 3D, and PS3 exclusives and 3rd party games, it does not get better then this. can't wait !!!!
Realistic activity is a direct activity believe it or not. He's pretty smart, magnet school and all, reads alot. To me it makes sense, because as far as I'm concerned I'd never say it - anything a person can do is "realistic" because its possible.
severance said
"i like how your 10 year old cousin is using words like "realistic activity" . are you going to ask him about his view on policy ?"
my exact same thought
i mean a 10 year old using those words i was like wow
really?
Wii was the first consol to do it and props to Nintendo for doing it, but PS Move has better graphics and it moves more percisley from what I've seen of it so far. At the end of the day all 3 of the motion controls don't appeal to me at all. The sorcery game was impressive because it showed people what could be done with PS Move but it doesn't appeal to me being an adult. All I've been thinking about after seeing Sorcery in action was dam Sony really needs to fund a Demons soul 2 for PS Move. I'd buy that and the PS Move on day 1 if that was the case.
Microsofts Natal looked pretty boring. The problem with on rail games is you loose interest in them really fast. Microsoft need to bring out something that allows you to move your character around. The casuals will love Natals games and so will little kids but sadley there over 20 million hardcore xbox 360 gamers that don't want to play games like that.
This just in: PS3 has better graphics then Wii!
Ok, I really enjoyed reading this article until your final final conclusion. While I am not just trying to push that Move looks cool for younger kids, as Kinect is pretty sweet too, you said this, "My impression after showing him Wii games, Move, Kinect, and 3DS games is that Wii is really the only system offering games in the genres he likes at the moment". With the ps3 demo's, he was essentially saying it is like the Wii games that he likes, only better graphics. Last I heard, this would mean that the ps3 is also offering games in the genres he likes at the moment.
these white on black news are dumb =(
Interesting. I had my son watch the Nintendo presser with me (since all we have is a Wii and a DS). The most memorable thing was seeing him get up and dance (he's 7 and still likes to jump around). He also made me pre-order Kirby and a couple of days later started playing DK Country again. So it is not a bad idea to gauge the interest of those who will push sales.
Mike from Morgantown
@ Severance: did it occur to you Jacob most probably paraphrased his cousin in the article instead of literaly copy/paste whatever he said?
Very cool article :)
BTW... LUCKY KID!!!
Good work.
i like how your 10 year old cousin is using words like "realistic activity" . are you going to ask him about his view on policy ?
very good article !
basically, kinect is way too realistic, i mean you can dance on your own, you don't need their dance game and xbox360/natal
kinect with buttons and controller could have been awesome, bad choice MS
PS Move is Wii motion +
3DS is actually hardcore and casual paradise, because there will be a combination of great Nintendo games, 3rd parties and graphics!
my 11 year old brother is most excited about 3DS
good article =)
I think his reaction will be similar to most people's. Move and Kinect are cool but they totally failed to significantly differentiate themselves from what the Wii already does - and what games Wii already has - for less. Who wants to pay more to play knock-off Wii games?
3DS will need to be experienced, just like Wii before it, before hype skyrockets.
I'm not sold on Epic Mickey either, nor it's sales potential. NBA Jam does seem to me to be perfectly suited to the Wii crowd. I expect Just Dance 2 to sell similar to DDRHP2 or Shaun White 2, as Wii owners rarely see a need for a second dose of the same experience.
While I'm at it, I expect Kirby EY and DKCR to sell respectively well to the Nintendo fanboys but lousy to general Wii owners as there's little reason to buy the new games instead of the VC classics for a lot less. Especially since they make little use of Wii's abilities.
Wii Party will be huge.
So things for Sony and MS to learn: Make games / applications that differentiate your product from Wii if you want Wii owners to "upgrade". Hint: better graphics isn't going to convince people to shell out the cash for an "upgrade". At this stage it's a pretty tall order for both peripherals leading in to this holidays, perhaps there'll be differentiating software in holiday 2011. Though you also want it to have similar stuff too for the green fields buyer, so you can say "sure it does the same stuff as Wii (party games and sports minigames), but look it also has...(e.g. with PS3 a Blu-ray player)".
Nice read. Is there any reason you didn't show him the new Zelda? That game uses motion plus, and is perhaps the prime example of a full length game that's truly built with motion controls in mind.
This is intriging, i suppose it would be interesting to see what the parents think as well, as their the ones would make the purchase decision. but i'm not that supprised about how he responded; that Socerey does looks a lot like Harry Potter.
Great article. You should do more like it.
don't listen to these scum bags this was some good stuff the only way it would be better is if you got him to play with all three new things... also why not hit up the mother or maybe some other female relative that would be pretty neet.
very good article
I didn't even read this. Are we having editorials on what 10 year old kids think?
Very interesting. You should make this a recurring feature. Young gamers are a big part of this industry. We vets always feel like gaming is ours and developers should always be catering to our tastes. It's important to know the trends that kids like because it effect the whole industry. In ten years they will be in the 20-30 demographic and the games they play today are what will build their tastes.
Interesting. I did something similar with my brother, too.
He responded most positively to Kinect as a whole and Mario Sports Mix. He's extremely active sports wise, so that may be a factor in his decision.
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