So, here we are at our post E3 moment, when the show's hype go down and we are faced with a cruel world made of truth and facts that we call reality. Like Norm Macdonald once said, a good way to differ fantasy from reality is that fantasy is good, while reality is bad.

I'll go right off the bat and take names, then do the commenting:

1º Nintendo Wii Remote + Motion Plus
2º Sony's Motion Controller
3º Microsoft's Project Natal

Let's start with the easiest one:

Nintendo Wii Remote + Motion Plus

Why is Nintendo's controller the best right now when it comes to movement? The first is of course, precision. The way the Wii Remote works with a gyroscope has made it possible to know where it is, related to itself.

The Wii Motion Plus adds a second gyroscope to the mix, creating the perfect setup for triangulation, the Pythagoras' Theorem, giving a perfect sense of where it is on a 3D space.



In case you don't know, Pythagoras' Theorem is used constantly on 3D games, and has been around since the old Mode 7 days, like Super Mario Kart on Super Nintendo.

That means that the Wii Remote + Motion Plus knows where it is all the time and can track all of your movements, even if you're behind the couch. Then we'll follow with...

Sony's Motion Controller

No name yet, huh? We have to forget for an instant that Sony was incredibly lame, with a presentation that was almost copy and paste from Nintendo's around a hour before. Altough I heard a lot of people complaining about the developers talking, I kinda liked how spontaneous they were.

There a big point that no one brought up. While it's not instant fail, it's a turn off for most people, cost. Sony's controller needs the EyeToy camera to work, and that means an extra cost and an extra accessory on your living room.



Besides that, Sony controller gets the second place, one, because its precision promises to be pretty good, but two, it loses to the Wii Remote because of a crucial problem, it depends of a camera.

That means that everytime you cover that luminous ball with your body or reach somewhere out of the camera reach, it won't recognize your movement.

Microsoft's Project Natal

And the last and certainly the least, Natal. It's not a third place, it's a last place. There are so many holes on it that you could fit a whale trough them.

While Nintendo and Sony showed their controls live, Microsoft showed it mostly as a video. They were live for like thirty seconds, and we saw some strange body recognizition then.

The games that were shown are not that step up from the usual EyeToy, and like a friend of mine and I were talking, we are very skeptical that Microsoft just suddenly discovered a secret magic way to recognize any body movement perfectly.

Something I'd like to take out straight from Sony's presentation: "Some games just don't feel right without buttons". It's not fun playing a FPS with your finger instead of a trigger.



Not to mention the cost portion again, it sure looks like it's way expensive. A nice reminder is that both Sony and Microsoft solutions cost more than the Wii Remote, even with the Motion Plus. Last year they tried to convince us to buy another camera for You're in the Movies, and I can see people getting angry if they did.

It's a bit too late at the Xbox 360 life to introduce a new peripheral like that. The Wii Balance Board sure set a new standard for peripherals, but there's just not enough time to fully realize Natal's potential before market pressure forces a new console generation.

And I just have to point out how Milo looks unreal. Some journalists have mentioned how it looked like someone was pulling the strings behind the curtain. Maybe we have to analize who was behind Milo all along.

Lets be honest, Peter Molyneux is very known for promising more than he delivers. I'm not saying he does it on purpose, maybe he's a compulsive designer, but that's a very harmful habit when it translates into unfaithful demos.

I know I'm being too picky, but I'm not happy with the idea of a revolutionary peripheral coming on the end of a console's life cycle which promises so much and shows so little. For now, I'll wait and see.

I like to move it move it

We just came back from three major conferences where three different companies all showed us motion controllers. Was Nintendo right all the time? I sure hope so, or else we're all in the same highway to hell.