Building a Better Controller

On an episode of the radio show This American Life entitled "Building a Better Mousetrap", they talked about the old saying of doing just that. Countless inventors have made it their goal, but ultimately it always ends in failure. The old board, spring, and metal bar mouse trap that we are accustomed to is simple yet effective enough that there just doesn't seem to be much need to improve upon it.

From the beginning of the home console, we have always had attempts made at redefining the video game controller. The Atari 2600 had a number of spin offs from their normal joystick controller, the NES had the Power Pad, Power Glove, Zapper, and even R.O.B. Controller experimentation was rampant, and no one wanted to settle on just one.

Even so, the main idea of the controller kept evolving as well. The perfectly rectangular NES controller got curves on the SNES. The Genesis took those curves even further to the point where they were almost handles. Then the Playstation came along, and brought with it what was to become the template for the ideal controller. From then on all controllers were essentially the same type of design with only small iterations on the formula (possibly barring the bloated original xbox model).

At least that was the case for 2/3rds of the industry. Nintendo took their controller alternatives to the forefront with the Wii, abandoning the traditional controller type and instead focusing on a motion controller in the shape of a remote and a slew of attachables. Some said they were revolutionizing the play control of our games, and paving a way for the future. It didn't take long for the core gamer audience to wane from it though. While the masses who weren't normally avid gamers piled on the bandwagon, they quickly realized that, while an interesting idea, it was little more then a very well supported controller alternative.

With most alternative attempts at game controllers before, there were very few games that actually used them. They used them to great effect, and were very fun, but you wouldn't want to have to shoehorn every game onto it. That's whats become of the Wiimote. Developers have continued to make the same games as always, but have had to find ways to make them work on the Wii. Instead of being a really fun alternative controller with which to play a handful of games, they had made it the only controller. It soon become like playing a shooter with your dance pad, and it just wasn't working out.

So, failed attempt? Unfortunately not. E3 2009 has shown us that Nintendos success with the casual audience has gotten the other companies excited. Microsoft unveiled Project Natal, a camera that senses your movements in 3d space and responds in the game world, and Sony showed off their own motion controller sort of similar to the wiimote but with much greater precision. I plead with both of these companies to not dive in all the way like Nintendo did. These controllers are not the future, they are really fun alternative controllers for a handful of games.

Now, I'm not condemning Nintendo mind you. They have made an extremely friendly controller to help bring new people to gaming, but these people might not stick around for long. If they do, they won't play games nearly as much as a normal game consumer. The Wii is a great system that most people buy for when people come over. The new audience that Nintendo has obtained, is for the most part happy with a handful of games, which is ultimately how many games should have used this controller. None of these people are going to sit down and play through a Zelda, much less the more mature games released on the system. We the core gamers are the ones that have to deal with controls shoehorned onto the wiimotes, the casual just plays the games made for the controller.

Going all out was probably the only way Nintendo could have had this success though. If the Wiimote had been an alternative controller, people might not have leaped to buy the system. So its perfectly fine that they did it, but Microsoft and Sony are in for a tough sell if they hope to take some of that audience away from Nintendo. The people Nintendo has convinced to play games, have done so because the entire system was built with that easier controller in mind. They won't buy another system just because it has a similar controller when they don't even understand what games will use it. So don't go all out Sony or Microsoft, these new controllers might sell well, but you will never have the same reaction the Wii has gotten. So be sure to keep making games for the core, on the controllers we love, because we will always stick by you.