Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

There's Nothing Casual About 'Casual Games'

by Kaiser Hwang on June 15, 2009 at 09:24 AM



This year's E3 has come and gone, and one of the overriding themes of the annual video game convention earlier this month was the use of motion controls in games to further immerse the player, but more importantly, to make games simpler, more intuitive, and less intimidating for "non-gamers." Nintendo entered this space several years ago with its monstrously popular Wii console, and both Microsoft and Sony debuted their camera-based systems last week. While each company's technology is impressive for its own reasons, the more significant trend to us is simply how physical games are becoming.

For instance, Microsoft's presentation for its Project Natal motion system showed players driving cars, riding a skateboard, and painting pictures on a wall sans controller -- the player simply makes the appropriate physical movements with his or her body. Sony's presentation for its yet-unnamed motion technology was quite similar, with the same emphasis on physical movement as player input. Of course, the Nintendo Wii has been doing this for the last several years, and the company is further enhancing the Wii Remote's accuracy with 1:1 motion tracking through the use of add-on peripheral called Wii MotionPlus.

Even if we exclude all of the above technologies, though, there are games such as 'Guitar Hero' and 'Rock Band,' in which the player mimics playing musical instruments using fake guitars and drums. There's also a new skateboard-shaped controller for the upcoming 'Tony Hawk: Ride' that folks actually stand and move on to perform tricks with. And who can forget the surprising rise of fitness/workout games such as 'Wii Fit,' which has sold more copies (more than 15 million, if you're curious) than such heavy-hitters as 'Grand Theft Auto IV' and 'Halo 3' -- at a $90 price tag, to boot.

There's definitely some irony in the fact that playing video games -- an activity that's often associated with, well, being lazy -- is transforming into such a physical one. More traditional controller-based games aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and we can't wait to see what developers do with all this newfangled motion technology, but for the time being, we're pretty content sitting in our La-Z-Boys, controllers in hand.

Tags: casualgames, e32009, top, wii

Comments

2

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular