EA boss: Motion could take half the market

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 June, 2009

Reckons he introduced Sony to wand.

EA boss John Riccitiello reckons that the videogame market may end up split down the middle between motion-control games and those played with a pad.

"My guess is that where this ends up is: motion controllers end up with half the market. And the other half still ends up with a more traditional game controller," he told Kotaku.

It will probably all come down to which sort of games are a good fit, he said.

"I could make an argument that fitness will do really well for Natal," he noted. "I could make an argument that 3D movement in space looks like it might be best done on the new Sony system."

Things like cover systems would only work in moderation though, he reckons, "because it'd be like doing 700 squats", while he doesn't think it's a good fit for FIFA because "a 75-minute session would be frigging tiring, jumping all over the place".

EA had even looked at the technologies that both Microsoft and Sony presented at E3 last week, Riccitiello said. "I've been playing with that and it is cool. And we saw that two years ago," he said of the Sony wand. "In fact, I think we introduced Sony to it."

As for Natal, "We almost invested to create a platform extension like that for some of the games we're working on." He said they looked at "the camera system they ended up going with", but he doesn't regret passing it up. "They can leverage it better, and we can build software."

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Chufty #1 3 years ago

    Excluding the entire PC gaming market, of course.

  • Wastelander #2 3 years ago

    I actually introduced Sony to the wand.

    It was back in the summer of '67 when I was working on the space program.

  • kangarootoo #3 3 years ago

    "Excluding the entire PC gaming market, of course"

    Maybe that fits into the non-motion control half of the market?

  • Freek #4 3 years ago

    What do mean "could"? Hasn't the Wii already done this?

  • dadrester #5 3 years ago

    hmmm... this video is from about 6 years ago. skip to 58 minutes for some interesting stuff. It's the (thoroughly nice) Sony tech guy from the e3 demo, showing off the Zcamera stuff from that company Microsoft bought last month.

  • MyPointIs #6 3 years ago

    I introduced the wand into Sony.

  • laudy #7 3 years ago


    We already have a wii. all i "play" is wii fit.

    half the market is welcome to Motion if they want it. i'll stick with a control pad.

  • NoCodeNed2 #8 3 years ago

    @dadrester - very interesting, good find. running on a PS2, too. blimey.

  • GreyBeard #9 3 years ago

    @dadrester

    Great find sir. Its interesting that Sony were not only aware of the Zcam tech, but had experimented with it sufficiently to do pretty much everything that MS showed this E3 with Natal so long ago.

    I suspect that the heart of the problem is the "always on" nature of the camera, which Marks alludes to near the end of the presentation. Sometimes input isn't desired, in fact its positively harmful, and the key issue when the whole body is involved is how you "mask" input such that only the stuff the player wants to express is "read" by the camera.

    The solution Marks uses in the video is that the player needs to "reach in" (place hands in front of their torso) to indicate to the camera that his input is to be recognized. However if you think about what that means, insofar as how it limits the range of gestural inputs that can be sagely monitored and under what circumstances, you can see why he said during Sony's "wand" demo that sometimes (controller) triggers are absolutely critical.

    I'm now pretty much absolutely convinced that Natal isn't going to work outside of a few select applications.

  • menschenfracht #10 3 years ago

    Power Glove can have half my market anytime.

    Or did he mean motion like in Rez Trance Vibrator? Mooooootiiiiiiiiooooooon?

  • Oh-Bollox #11 3 years ago

    "In fact, I think we introduced Sony to it."

    Is it a law that every EA employee must lie at least once in every statement, or is it something they do off their own backs?

  • Xerx3s #12 3 years ago

    "Excluding the entire PC gaming market, of course. "

    What are you talking about? The non console market has been using motion control since 1963! :D

  • Bigglesworth #13 3 years ago

    I've introduced my wand to a lot of things, but I don't go around bragging about it.

  • captainrentboy #14 3 years ago

    God I facking hate motion control, if this is what developers end up switching most of their focus to over the next 3-5 years, well I better go and find a new hobby. But I'm not sure there are many hobbies out there that just allow me to sit down on my couch and not move for 3 hours. Dammit!

  • jambo74 #15 3 years ago

    @captainrentboy

    There are plenty, any you know it!

  • autogunner #16 3 years ago

    surely its going to make cross platform development horrific and even more expensive

  • Corben_Dallas #17 3 years ago

    EA: Complete Knobhead with Planet sized ego thinks he created all forms of videogames