So, every year at E3, you hear the major console manufacturers touting the latest & greatest. If you listen to Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, the Future of Gaming(tm) is either motion control or 3D. Sony & Nintendo are investing heavily in different styles of 3D gaming, and MS & Sony are both playing catchup to the Wii’s motion controls.

I’ll go out on a limb, here, and say that they’ve completely missed the sea change.

First, let’s talk motion control. No, wait – let’s just talk immersiveness in gaming, because it’s the core issue behind why motion control and 3D, as they’re currently envisioned, will both be flops.

The problem with motion control is resistance. The problem with 3D is position. In both cases, they’re up against their particular form of the Uncanny Valley.

With motion control, you can have as much fidelity as you want. When I played around with Sony’s Move, it’s pretty incredible – it’s fast, it’s accurate… in short, it’s everything the Wii isn’t. There’s a lot you can do with the Move that you simply couldn’t do with the Wii. No one’s going to care, though, because without *feedback*, it’s impossible to really get that sense of immersion.

Here’s the thing – the best game to come out on the Wii, by a long, long margin, is Wii Sports – specifically, Wii Sports Bowling. I’d venture that that one minigame, on its own, sold the bulk of the Wii’s hardware. But the thing is, with bowling, you really have very little feedback in real life. You release the ball – to an expert bowler, there’s probably a lot in that release. But to most people? Not much.

But expand beyond bowling to tennis, and you’re screwed. A tennis racket hits something. It’s that satisfying thwack that’s a huge part of the joy in real tennis, and it’s something that Wii Sports tennis utterly lacks. Same goes with boxing. Hitting nothing is not the same as hitting something. And the Move is equally screwed, because the better fidelity doesn’t make hitting nothing feel like hitting something. It just doesn’t. And if you talk to people, or if you simply think about what you want in a motion controlled game, it’s involvement – it’s physicality – it’s interaction with something, not interaction with nothing.

That lack of feedback is where motion control falls into the uncanny valley.

With 3D, it’s functionally the same. Current 3D gets you partway there, then falls completely apart. Current 3D technology gives you a nice sense of depth. That’s really it. The effect falls apart at the edges of the screen, and to me, it looks a lot more like someone set up a bunch of billboards at differing depths, rather than really being 3D, but even ignoring that, the effect is just a gimmick.

The use of 3D – the benefit of moving beyond a 2D image, ideally, isn’t just to create a vague sense of depth, it’s to make you feel more immersed. Well, the problem is that looking at a 2D image, I have a lot of mental skill in understanding it as a representation of something three-dimensional – but give me a little bit of actual representation of depth, and it either has to work completely, or it’s really distracting. Worse, I can now see depth, but I can’t interact with it in any physically meaningful way.

I can’t run around to the back of the image, for instance. With both motion control & 3D, the problem is that it strives to create a more robust virtual environment for me to interact with, but in doing so, just makes the limitations all the more dramatic.

Does that mean that I don’t think they should be pushing this tech forward? I absolutely think that they should. Personally, I’m really interested in Move & Kinect, and will almost certainly get them both. 3D I don’t care so much for. But I think until someone invents something that projects images directly into your optic nerve & stimulates your neurons to believe you’re actually interacting with something physical, these new technologies are fun toys, but don’t really enhance the sense of immersion in the world.

Where was I going with this?

The point is actually kind of simple – and I wish that MS/Sony/Nintendo really “got it”, but they seem to have missed it entirely, and it’s why Apple/webOS/Android are going to sucking users (and money) out of the “traditional” game industry at a rapidly increasing rate.

The social aspect of gaming is important, and the ability to play *anywhere* has tremendous value. Nintendo has a great success in the DS as a mobile device, but as a connected device, it’s a worthless piece of garbage. With the new wave of mobile devices, you can play anywhere with *real people you actually like*. To be up-front, honest, and kind of crass about it, I can jump online and play with other human beings who are spread out all over the country in the few minutes it takes to go to the bathroom. No matter where that bathroom is.

Think about how insane that would have sounded even two years ago.

The future of gaming isn’t 3D or motion control that you use while sitting in front of a television at home. The 3D you’ll be interacting with is the real world. The motion control is you moving in it. Add to that the social element of being connected to anyone you want at any time. And it’s not Move, Kinect or 3D TVs that will make that happen. It’s the phone in your pocket that will be your window into a new world of play.