Hands On

Taking a brief look at the past gaming consoles one thing is clear. Only recently has anyone put much thought into the aesthetics of the console itself, and the ergonomics of the controller.

I personally think the PS1 dual shock controller was the first step into the modern user interface of today. Even if it was inspired by Nintendo's controllers. Users loved it so much that when the early designs for the PS3 controller came out, there was such backlash that they just changed the design back to the PS2 design. Even the xbox 360 controller, clearly takes it's inspiration from Sony's controller. It however does make some differences of it's own.

Gone are the days of the joystick and basic game pad. One of the main reasons for this largely has to be to do with the more complex game play with modern games, and thus the requirement for a larger number of buttons.

Of course most recently we have the Nintendo wii. The whole premise of this console is to challenge and innovate the way in which we play games. On the whole Nintendo has been relatively successful with this. Certainly if we are judging this on market sales they have done amazingly well. But if we are to take a critical gamers point of view, then we have to ascertain that although the control system works, the console is severely lacking in the calibre of games that can be found on other consoles. To this end Nintendo has latched onto the more casual gamer market. Whilst this is profitable in itself some fear that they are isolating the real gamers out there.

Even though the Wii is riding high, and the PS3 has the six axis, and Xbox is coming up with Natal and games such as rockband/guitar hero exist, i don't think the game pad is going anywhere soon. The aforementioned all provide new and fun ways to play, but the game pad will always be essential for just sitting back and relaxing and playing games. Whilst playing the wii of maybe guitar hero, you naturally become that much more animated whilst playing a game, I've tired playing both while just sat back relaxing and it's just not the same.

The future is going to be fascinating. It will be interesting to see, if the Wii and endeavours such as natal ever provide the complexity of control offered by the xbox and playstation controllers.