In light of the recent motion gaming releases such as the Sony Playstation’s Move and Microsofts Xbox Kinect the internets have been se
t a-blaze in regards to whether or not these pieces of technology are the next  push forward in interactive gaming. As Geeks, and its culture alike you would think we would want a more innovative step towards total immersion, yeah…. not so much. The general consensus has been “I don’t want to get up and play games, I want to grab my controller and sit down”. Now don’t get me wrong even I have been guilty of that statement and thought process until I started to realize what I really want from my gaming experience. The one word that entered my mind was “immersion”. As I thought about it I will never be able to truly immerse myself in games due to the proverbial crutch which is the controller. When you think about it, the controller itself was made as a platform piece of equipment that allowed you to interact with what was on screen, due to limits in technology, resources, time or cost effectiveness. The only thing we’ve gotten since then are more elaborate and complex pads. If you have a wooden crutch and you add, buttons, a wheel, heck even a jet-pack its still a crutch. I say that to say this, in every geeks mind at one time or another we  imagined one day being able to go into an X-men’s Danger Room, Tron world, or Star Treck’s Holodeck so when you look at all motion gaming especially a device like Kinect you can see the primordial steps towards that immersing interactive experience. 
I’m not saying this merits a $150 upwards to $300 (in some cases) purchase, but at some point we as gamers have to realize if we don’t evolve our mentality we will never have those types of experiences. Right now we control avatars or a protagonist in some way shape or form, even if we have the choice to customize them totally to fit our precise physical description, its still not “us”. In short (lol) what Im saying is lets not be so quick to point a condemning finger at something that falls outside of our gaming comfort zone, and try to look at what the technology presents to the innovation of gaming. If we do this who knows, maybe the Nintendo Powerglove would have been more successful (what am I saying that thing was dead on arrival), but gamers lets get off the controller crutch take up your bed and walk and maybe one day we’ll learn to fly.
Here’s the problem I have with your argument: No medium is more immersive to me than books. Yet no medium is farther from the actual experience of what’s going on.
Motion control, for me at least, will tend to break the immersion factor as I have to concentrate more on what I’m doing and not the story of the game.
Just my two cents.
The reason books are so immersive is because they (should) mix a well written story with your imagination. For games to move to this level of immersion we will need something like a biological interface that we can connect our brains directly, ala the Matrix. I don’t put this past our capabilities in the future. For advancements, you need financial backing. The Wii showed there was money in “Family†“motion†controlled games, so Microsoft put some money behind motion control and the game developers are largely releasing family games for it. I think what the argument is, instead of shunning this, embrace it in the hopes that they will continue down the road of innovative immersion. If motion control falls flat on its face, the companies will say “ok, back to controllers thenâ€. What if the Powerglove had been a huge success… would they have moved towards suits that control games? Full body suits that allow you to control games without a controller? In the mid to late 90s? Who knows. Personally, I wish everyone and their dog would go buy an OCZ controller or a Emotiv EPOC headset just to get some financial backing in thought controlled gaming.
The only reason you have to concentrate more is because it is new, but you have to do this anytime you pick up a new platform to some degree, if not every game you pick up. The first time you put a NES controller in your hand, you had to get used to moving with your left thumb and jumping with your right. Depending on your original platform, be it a computer or consol, you had to concentrate on the differences between thumb sticks and buttons to a keyboard and mouse. Unless you have only ever played one companies system and that is all you ever intend to play, you are going to lose some immersion INITIALLY while concentrating on the new controls. Do you really want the new gaming systems in 2050 to still be controlled by something that looks almost just like Playstation or Xbox’s current controllers?