“We need buttons to have certain kinds of experiences”, says Sony

By Joe Anderson

Sony has revealed that it looked into technology such as Kinect, before finally deciding on PlayStation Move.

Speaking in an extensive interview with Digital Foundry, Sony Europe’s Richard Marks said that sometimes, buttons are just necessary.

“I’m a heavy proponent of 3D cameras. I think they’re really interesting technology”, he said.  “We had many different 3D camera prototypes and we had our game teams look into that to evaluate what they could do with it. There are some experiences that it can do that are really neat but there just weren’t enough experiences that made it make enough sense as a platform-level controller.

“Coming back is that sometimes we need buttons to have certain kinds of experiences. Other times we need more precision than we can get out of those cameras. We need to know exactly what you’re doing with your hands, especially in the more hardcore experiences.”

In response to this, Digital Foundry asked if Marks feels that technology like Kinect actually limits gamers.

“If it’s just that 3D camera, yeah I guess, he said. “That’s what we ran into with EyeToy. When you have only the camera, it’s a magical feeling but sometimes you just wish you could select something.

“I don’t want to wave to click a button.”

You can read the whole interview with Richard Marks over at Digital Foundry, it’s very interesting and definitely worth the read.

PlayStation Move is due for release starting September this year.