PS3 Move Vs Microsoft Kinect

There has been a constant and healthy rivalry between many of the gaming providers and this holiday season is going to be no different for the two big gaming giants.  To capitalize on the holiday season, the gaming majors SONY Computer Entertainment (SCE) and Microsoft are coming up with their niche products; Play Station Move for PlayStation 3 and Kinect for Xbox 360 respectively. Both PS Move and Kinect 360 are add-ons to their respective systems and have been touted as a motion sensing game controller platform and will be competing against Wii Remote.

PS Move will be more or less resembling Wii Remote as they are based on the same technology whereas Kinect will be vastly different from these products despite serving the same community. PS Move will be making an early entry into the market as it is supposedly to be released in the third week of September whereas Kinect will be making its debut in the first week of November. Including biggies like Warner Bros. and Ubisoft, a total of 36 third party game development agencies have agreed to support the PS Move.

In terms of originality and hardware, Kinect has been reviewed to be superior to Move. It is devoid of any batteries and has been invented on a completely new technology whereas Move requires batteries for its functioning and has been invented by merely advancing current technology. The novelty in Kinect is likely to give it an advantage of becoming a favorite for younger audience and casual gamers. In terms of accommodating number of players, Move is expected to have an upper hand over Kinect.

 Move can accommodate a maximum of four players whereas the number of players in Kinect is expected to be restricted to just two. However, it should be noted that Move can accommodate four players only if four different sets are bought whereas Kinetic can accommodate two players just with one single purchase. The interface of Kinetic has widely been appreciated as it is supposed to give a truly hands-free experience unlike Move which is still based on buttons. Unlike Move, Kinetic has the potential to change the way games are being designed as it gives the developer a whole new avenue of innovating games without the need for any kind of buttons.

An added advantage of Move is that there will be a backward compatibility provided via patches which will enable it to be used on several of the existing games. Moreover, any future games can be played with Move. However, Kinect does not have such flexibility and will thus limit the number of games that could be played using it. In terms of tracking motion accuracy, Move has been reported to be better than Kinect since it is based on a relatively well established technology whereas Kinect is based on a relatively new technology and needs to overcome some of the teething problems. However, this very same factor is supposed to give Microsoft a huge advantage as the technology behind Kinect could change the way humans interact with their computers.

Matt Anton is an avid player and journalist of video games. He enjoys blogging about all things in the tech industry, specifically related to game news. He is best known, however, for his contributions at http://GameFriends.com - The Video Game Social Community for Gamers.