Sony Takes On Nintendo Wii With PlayStation Move Wand

Sony put Nintendo on notice Wednesday with the unveiling of a motion controller called the PlayStation Move for PS3 game consoles during the electronics giant's highly anticipated press conference at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Nintendo has had motion control gaming virtually to itself since the release of its Wii console in late 2006. The unit's wireless controller, the Wii Remote, detects movement in three dimensions and the resulting physical activity-oriented game experience is widely credited for vaulting Nintendo's product past the Sony PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 in overall global console sales since the Wii's debut.

But early reports from GDC indicate that Sony's PlayStation Move controller could prove a worthy rival to the Wii Remote. A review on CNET described the new PS3 motion controller as providing an "experience was generally very close to what we're used to from the Nintendo Wii, albeit with a much greater sense of precision," though the reviewer went on to call PlayStation Move "a work in progress" due to some oversensitivity issues.

The PlayStation Move is set for release in late 2010, according to reports.

Another challenge for Sony is the fact that, unlike the Wii, none of this is built into an off-the-shelf PS3. Sony's foray into motion control gaming requires PS3 owners to purchase not just the bright bubble-topped Move controller, but also the interactive PlayStation Eye camera. Sony will reportedly bundle the Move controller, Eye camera and a compatible game as a PS3 peripheral that will be priced at about $100, according to the Epoch Times.

A second "sub-controller," similar to the Wii Nunchuck, will allow for more complex interaction with some games. Both the Move and the sub-controller connect to the PS3 via Bluetooth. Upcoming motion-controlled games that will be compatible with PlayStation Move include Tiger Woods 2010, SOCOM 4 and LittleBigPlanet, while games based around sports like archery and table tennis, martial arts and a first-person shooter called "The Shoot" are also in the pipeline, according to the European PlayStation blog.

Sony spotlighted its motion-control efforts last June at the E3 Conference, where Microsoft also gave attendees a first look at its own motion-control plans for the Xbox 360, a controller-less motion capture system with face recognition dubbed Project Natal.

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