Square Enix President Has Doubts About Motion Controls

Sony and Microsoft may be pinning a lot of their hopes on new motion control systems but Square Enix President Yoichi Wada is somewhat less optimistic, saying their ultimate impact "may be small."

After a few years of watching Nintendo rule the roost with the Wii, both Sony and Microsoft finally bought into the idea that there might be something to all this motion-controlled business after all. Both companies unveiled their own motion-sensing systems at the 2009 E3 and appear to be betting heavily that these new controllers will play a prominent role in attracting a new generation of gamers.

In an interview with the Financial Times, however, Wada sounded somewhat less stoked about the idea than his console-making counterparts. "Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine," he said. "Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small. They are an extension of the gaming function."

The impact of the devices could be greater, he said, if a solid selection of compelling games is released for them, but noted that designing games that use motion controls is "quite difficult."

Still, he did offer some praise for Project Natal, Microsoft's motion-sensing controller for the Xbox 360. "As a user interface it's fantastic and I think it will become standard," he said.