I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks that part of the reason the Wii is collecting dust on many gamers’ console shelf (assuming they haven’t been pawned off already) is the total lack of confidence in 3rd party developed titles, mostly created by the utter and complete lack of quality control on the hundreds of crap mini-game compilations available for the console. Your branded games like Burger King, and Chucky Cheese titles, and the miscellaneous “<insert unique word here> Games” titles I’m sure appealed to some poor gullible/uninformed parent or grand parent trying to do something nice for their (grand) child, and throwing $40 down on something that had no business getting out of development.

I mentioned a while back that I think Playstation Move has the potential to be very successful with some support from the 3rd party developers, as long as they don’t fall into this same trap Nintendo did of companies simply trying to cash in on the fact that something is new and interesting. Fact of the matter is I like to believe that the PS3 user base is significantly more educated/aware than the Wii user base. It’s no secret that Nintendo marketed to families, and casual gamers, and was very successful in doing so. Sony however, is ~now~ marketing to that same audience (right or wrong strategy, remains to be seen), but they already have a huge user base in the core gamer. The thing is that it is also appealing to these existing users, and perhaps specifically ~their~ families and the casual gamers there in. Hardcore gaming fathers buying move setups for their kids for example (same logic may apply to Kinect as well, but for the sake of this article I will stick with Move).

Now the reason I wanted to write this article is because today there has been a steady stream of Little Big Planet 2 videos released as the result of the non-disclosure agreement for the beta expiring. Huh?… what does LBP2 have to do with this?… good question. LBP2 has the potential to replace any and all mini game collections by way of it’s user content creator. As long as the “educated” ps3 user base does well at informing their Move motivated families… What I saw in these videos is a collection of self-motivated game designers creating what look to be fun little distractions, that will be freely available in the play-create-share model that LBP is known for. Since LBP2 supports Move, there is absolutely no reason that any number of simple little mini games using motion controls will be infinitely, and freely available to the entire Move user base presuming they are well enough informed to buy LBP2.  I see no reason for since even on it’s own it’s an incredibly charming platform game with an adorable leading character and a great reputation.

While the launch titles for PS Move did not appeal to me at all, and I don’t have the device, I’m really hopeful that this will act a deterrent from would be minigame compilation creators and allow for Sony to build a strong relationship with 3rd party developers that will perpetuate to it’s users by way of some truly amazing, and unique experiences that integrate motion controls that Wii has been unable to deliver thus far (Honestly if Ubi were to port Red Steel 2 and get rid of half of the doors we’d be talkin’) .

Good luck Sony