Sony has announced that a new motion controller for the Playstation 3, “Playstation Move”, will be released this autumn alongside a line of games that take advantage of the system.
The one-handed controller, similar to the Nintendo Wii remote, contains sensors that detect movement. It works in conjunction with the Playstation Eye video camera, with a glowing orb on the top of the controller to measure where you are pointing.
A secondary, “sub-controller”, includes an analogue stick for more complicated gameplay closer to games already seen on the console.
The announcement was made at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. “Playstation Move” faces tough competition from Microsoft’s 3D camera “Natal” and the Nintendo Wii.
Sony also announced a limited selection games to be released with the device, many of them being based on sports or minigame collections. These include a bare-knuckle boxing game that called “Dukes”, a family-aimed party game creatively titled “Move Party” consisting of games that include catching bugs and painting lines, and “Sports Champions” which includes table-tennis and archery.
“Move” can also be used with existing titles. The sidescrolling platformer “LittleBigPlanet” which encouraged players to build levels themselves will be recieving a free update to enable the new controller to work with the game. It will allow for one person to control the character Sackboy whilst the other can manipulate objects during the game for co-operative gameplay.
Jack Tretton, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said at the conference that the company will be releasing 20 games using the controller this year, and that 36 other companies are also working on titles for the system.
The technology has garnered praise but there have been concerns about the range and creativity of the titles scheduled for the launch of “Playstation Move”.
Garnett Lee, writer for gaming website Shacknews, said: “Many of these initial Move offerings feel like I’m doing things with the wands just to be using them. That said, it felt good in my hands and lived up to the technical billing for precision.”
No price has been announced for the controller. It will be released this autumn and will work with existing Playstation 3 consoles.
To say that this is meant to be a “new product”, they simply seem to have stolen the Wiimote, streamlined it and relaunched it.
Knowing the Sony brand it will probably be ridiculously overpriced too…