Motion controls are great and games should use them more – Reader’s Feature

Following the release of Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, a reader is frustrated that Sony and Nintendo don’t use motion controls more in other games.

Me and my family have been really looking forward to the new Nintendo game this autumn. It’s based on an existing one, so it’s not totally original, but it’s something we’ve all had fun with in the past and we like the franchise in general. So we pre-ordered it and have been eagerly looking forward to getting our teeth into it and enjoying the superior graphics on Switch 2.

I am, of course, referring to Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. I know that’s probably not what everyone else is excited about right now (we are getting Zelda: Ocarina Of Time as well) but you can’t play Zelda with the whole family, and I assume it’s going to have only minor amounts of motion controls.

As strange as it may seem for someone who would consider themselves a fairly hardcore gamer, I’ve always liked motion controls and a lot of that is due to the experience of playing the original Wii Sports back in the day and finding that, finally, my girlfriend (now wife) could enjoy my love of video games with me.

Now that we have kids as well, we can all join in, as constantly using touchscreens has made them less able with a gamepad than I would’ve expect at their age. But with the Joy-Cons and the motion controls it feels like we’re all on the same level.

I’m someone that enjoys everything from Elden Ring to Civilization, so I’m not a casual gamer myself. But playing a game as simple and welcoming as this with my family is a really important thing, I feel.

As others have pointed out, Sony and Microsoft have really missed a trick not catering to family friendly games. And while Xbox never really had that sort of game Sony did used to, but now just doesn’t bother. Which is stupid when you know they can make good ones still (Astro Bot!) and the example of Nintendo doing well, appealing to that audience, is right there.

But it’s not just the games themselves, it’s the controls as well. GC made a very good point that despite adding camera control and a jump button to Ocarina Of Time seeming like a no-brainer to veteran gamers it does suddenly make the game much harder to play for non-gamers.

The biggest problem my wife has is camera controls on the right stick. She hates it and it basically means she can’t play any ‘normal’ game. With Switch Sports and other motion control games she’s fine though.

And it’s not even about non-gamers. Motion controls are really good for normal action games. Splatoon is the obvious example for aiming but that works really well in most Switch 2 games, including Zelda. The weird thing is that the PlayStation 5 DualSense can do the same thing, it’s just Sony and other developers never use it.

There’s a lot of problems in the games industry right now, but I think one of them is that everyone is too stuck in a certain way of doing things. They complain about the audience for games not growing but do nothing to change that. They never try to look at what might put people off from playing existing games. Instead, their answer is always to make something completely different, that nobody ends up liking.

Motion controls won’t work for some games but they’re a lot more versatile and accurate than the original Wii ones and I think they should be used more. It shouldn’t just be a random Switch Sports game every five years.

By reader Golem

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