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Wii and PlayStation Move 'Kind of the Same,' says Molyneux

Posted June 24, 2010 by M.H. Williams

Both Sony and Microsoft showed their new motion controllers in full detail at this year's E3. Last year, Microsoft showed off the Kinect as 'Project Natal.' Instrumental in the demonstrations at that time was Fable designer Peter Molyneux, who showed off a tech demo called Milo & Kate. The demo allowed the user to interact with a life-like young boy called Milo. Yet this year, Milo & Kate was suspiciously absent from the full Kinect presentation. 

1UP got the chance to talk with Molyneux about Milo & Kate, the Wii, and the PlayStation Move. Molyneux says he finds Nintendo and Sony's motion controllers to be mostly the same.

“I find it hard in my mind to differentiate between the Sony Move and the Wii. They seem very similar in their scope,” he said. “I know Sony and Nintendo would argue that they are different, but they kind of seem the same. They enable certain sorts of experiences, and they are analogous to Kinect.”

He's also quick to say that the Kinect is wildly different from the rest.

“This is not me talking as a Microsoft employee, this is me talking as a designer, but I have to take my hat off to Microsoft. Because they really did go one step beyond what they needed to do,” he added. “It would be very easy for them to have created something like the Wii, but instead they did go that extra mile and they said, 'No, we're going to make that huge step.' I think the real benefits are going to be shown in the next wave of titles that come out.”

Molyneux believes the Kinect is an additional tool developers can use to create new experiences, but not a complete replacement of what's come before.

“I think Kinect is one aspect of gaming. In a way, if Kinect was a bicycle, it's like you say, 'Do you see everyone in the world riding bicycles and not driving cars?' No, I think Kinect gives us opportunities to entertain people in different ways. It doesn't functionally replace the controller,” he said. “I think there are games that are controller games and that are designed for controller games, for sure. I think it does change the way that we think about video games and the audience that we're doing games for. I don't think it is the only answer for the future of games.”

On the missing Milo & Kate, Molyneux let 1UP know that the title is still alive and in development. 

“We are developing it, and it is probably the most interesting and fascinating thing I've ever done in my life. I'm actually giving a talk about that soon, and we will be going into more detail there. I think it was one of those things where we said, 'Should we show it at E3? Should we show it?' I think that we made the right decision to not show it, but it very much is a project that we hold dear to our hearts, and we're as excited as we can be.”

M.H. Williams has been writing in some form or another for ten years and has been a hardcore gamer since the NES first graced American shores.  You can catch him on Twitter as @AutomaticZen, Google+ as himself, or on his personal Facebook page.