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Everyone loves motion control. Modern game controllers have too many buttons for the average person to learn to play a game. At least, that’s what everyone says after Nintendo’s runaway success in selling the Wii. To refute this, I present a video from Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

Kudo Tsunoda repeatedly refers to Jimmy Fallon as a core gamer. Jimmy Fallon has said in several interviews how much he likes to play video games. He owns every current gen system. I don’t know if he’s a good player, poor player or outstanding player. All I know is that he says he plays a lot of games, yet he misses the ball on his first swing. He then goes on to miss several other balls. He seems to get embarrassed and gets someone else to jump in for him.

Guy number two misses the ball on his first swing. He then manages to hit about as many as he misses. He also seems to get a little embarrassed, so guy number three jumps in and starts playing. Guy number three hits the ball on his first try. He then goes on to hit almost all of the balls and is clearly better at this game than Jimmy or guy number two.

You can stop blaming the controller

What have we learned by this video demonstration with three people who have never before used Project Natal?

1. Two out of three players missed the ball on their first swing.
2. Two out of three players had difficulties playing the game.
3. Controls still had to explained by an experienced player to the new players.

In short, if you aren’t good at video games, you aren’t going to be good at motion controller video games. It’s you, not the controller. You can overcome this by actually playing video games. Practice makes perfect.