Game Technology

OK before i start this blog i need to apologise to anyone thats been reading my blogs, i seem to have been subconciously typing in MSN talk in some parts of them. Not good. Anyhooo........

Well one look at the timeline of game consoles and its easy to suggest that consoles in the modern world arent too far from hairdressers, they are just as bothered about their looks as they are their performance. But which one will win the beauty pagent? Well it depends on which target audience you are, because i think in the next gen race console are being designed relative to their game line ups and to be pleasing to the kind of person that plays it. Take the Nintendo Wii for example, its small, dinky and to some extent cuter than its rivals...not exactly the alpha male of the bunch. But when its audience now having the likes of mam and dad playing Wii Fit on its side this is the kind of look that is appealing to a more overall and family market. Plus its line up of games doesnt really include the gritty kind of gore feautured in Gears of War or the Halo series. Compared to the PS3 which bares a more 'sleeker' and manly design as it were and a host of a range of games that nearly all involve someone being creatively dismembered with a firearm.

But ashtetic looks aside peformance in next gen has become a bit of a hastle. I agree that the gaming industry is a tad more focused on fancy user interfaces that simply 'did the job'. I think of myself as quite intellegent but with abseloutely no common sense. So the new interfaces on PS3 and Xbox 360 had me done for a bit. Even though my male instinct of ' i dont need intsructions, ill just play about pressing things till i figure it all out' helped me in the end its still beyond the point when you cant find what you want. No XP gained for Sony or Microsoft here.

I do agree that a joystick in terms of an interactive, performance controller has been long 6 feet under, But the design of the joystick isnt so much dead, its more passed on the torch. I mean what do you think an analog controller is? A joystick miniturised and placed into a more confortable controller format. But this change to controllers i believe was the final nail in the coffin for joysticks as it was made to keep up with the advancing technology of gaming. 2 analog sticks wer soon made neccessary along with an additional 6 or 7 buttons in order to keep up with what could be accomplished in modern games. And with modern day gaming involving 2-3 button combos to peform even simple actions such as aim and shoot the simplistic days of 2 buttons and a joystick have long but perished. But the essence of it hasnt been lost completely as those 2 analog sticks present on our controllers today still show us where we came from.

But as this out with the old in with the new trend keeps on happening in gaming i beg to differ than the controller is following the same path....yet. Yes we have made the next step as Wii has so proudly shown us but personally i dont think its a trend thats goin to stick. More a fad that will die with the Wii. I mean yes its a new step forward but its still flawed. Let us again look at the world of Star Wars and the game The Force Unleashed. For Xbox & PS3 the lightsaber is directly controlled by the analog stick, whereas the Wii you use the remote as if it were a real saber, not that this isnt super cool but it has its downfalls. To peform lightsabre combos you have to move the analog stick in certain ways (up, down, up down, left, right etc.) Now for a controller this is easy. But try accurately doing all that in the space of a few seconds with your Wii remote and your in for some trouble. It just cant handle it and leaves your jedi flailing his saber about like an idiot. More like button bashing than a cool lightsaber combo. So i although we do have our advances in controller technology i dont think its a major enough step forward. So lucky us weve still got a bit of a way to go before a controller has a R.I.P sign across it.