Tag Archives: sony motion controller

EA CEO John Riccitiello has been careful not to repeat THQ boss Brian Farrell’s performance in his investor call last week, calling Sony’s Motion Controller exactly that. Not Arc.

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Holy Shit.

Looks like THQ CEO Brian Farrell just called Sony’s Motion Controller the PlayStation Arc.

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A Nikkei report has surfaced stating that Sony’s Motion Controller will have 10 games compatible with the new peripheral by the end of the year.

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Capcom has said that Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition’s release date will not be changed, just because Sony’s has delayed the release of its motion controller.

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Sony has filed trademarks for four new game titles.

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Sony has said that its motion controller is not called Gem, but it was an early prototype name for the product.

“The term ‘Gem’ was an early code name for the product,” SCEA bossman Patrick Seybold told Kotaku. “We haven’t announced final name at this point.”

This comes to light after John Riccitiello slipped up and blurted the name out yesterday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference.

Still, Gem is better than the Wand. Sounds less pornographic to us at any rate.

More through the links.

Sony head Shuhei Yoshida said during TGS that for now, the motion controller debuted at E3 is being dubbed the Wand Controller.

Until Sony can come up with a proper name, that is.

“There are several candidates for the name of the controller,” said Yoshida. “The SIXAXIS and the DualShock 3 — while great product names — are based on the actual tech. The name we pick for the Wand Controller maybe won’t be so techy.”

Sony is hoping to appeal to both the casual and core market with the controller, therefore Sony is eager to convey the image instead of the tech.

Rumors that Sony already has a Nunchuk peripheral in the design phase are floating about, but Yoshida refused to comment on it. Instead, he said that using the DualShock 3 as a Nunchuk was “the cheapest solution”.

More through Kotaku.

Photo credit: GameWatchImpress.

Sony bossman Kaz Hirai has shown attendees at his TGS keynote the new motion controller demoed at E3.

He didn’t demo it, but spoke a bit about it instead, showing a wand with changing colors of yellow, blue, and purple.

“The controller has image recognition and depth perception and it’s accurate and can trace user’s positions,” he told the crowd.

Hirai went on to say that Sony will continue to work closely with devs to help support the motion controller as it can attract “light” users.

He also said it has “a light vibration feedback”. Rawr. Day one purchase.

Hit this for the rest of the keynote’s news.

Photo courtesy of Joystiq.

Part 3 of Sony’s motion controller Blog series is up, and we have it posted for you after the break.

In it, Richard Marks and Anton Mikhailov break down their E3 on-stage demo into more detail discussing plasma whips and drawing, abstract domino snakes and real time strategy games.

Stuff that was left out of the E3 presentation is included as well, so you might as well give it a watch.

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Sony has posted Part 2 of its inside look at its new motion controller. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 3 is expected next week.

In it, the R&D team’s Anton Mikhailov breaks down the PVC origins and some of the possible applications for the new controller.

Please give us a name Sony. Anything is better than what it’s being called now.

Video is posted below.

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Take-Two CEO Ben Feder told investors during the company’s Q3 2009 financial call today that motion sensor kits are currently in-house and in the hands of its development teams right now.

“Natal motion-sensors – yes we have dev kits, yes we’re working on them,” he said. “Obviously, we can’t comment on games we haven’t announced. But those dev kits are embedded in all of our studios, or just about all of our studios, and everybody’s working with them to try to figure out new ways in which we can innovate and create the kind of content that this company is famous for.

“So yes, we’re working on it.”

At least we think it was Feder that said that. There were too many people adding their input on the question at the time. We will have another listen just to be sure.

Anyway, later on during the call, it was clarified that Sony’s motion controller was currently in-house as well.

So that’s good to know.

Sony bossman, Shuhei Yoshida, has told Eurogamer that the launch titles coming for the new PS3 motion controller only need one of the motion controller to be played.

“The ultimate goal or wish for us is if you have two controllers, like we demoed at E3, we can do something really amazing,” he said.

“It’s like putting your arms into the TV, like a gaming space, and you have total control of the 3D space in front of you, but because of cost-of-goods and, you know, people have to have the PlayStation Eye camera as well, we are approaching the launch by making sure that all games that we create can be played with one controller and the camera.

“We will also introduce options for if you happen to have more than one controller available. Experiences will be enhanced if you purchase a second.”

During E3, Sony mentioned during the demonstration that up to four wands could be used and recognized by PlayStation Eye at once.

More through the link.

PS3 special projects manager Dr. Richard Marks has been talking up Sony’s new motion controller to PC World.

While the company has yet to make an official announcement for the peripheral, Marks did provide information as to why it’s important that you hold something in your hand.

“We learned that while people definitely enjoy physical interaction and movement, they also want precise control and a simple, fast, reliable way to trigger actions. We designed our new control system to accomplish all of this,” he told the site. “We believe the path we have chosen is an ideal combination of both spatial and action/button input, and of course we can combine that with voice and video data from the PlayStation Eye mic array and camera.

“Having a hand-held controller greatly increases the precision that is possible, since we have designed it specifically for that purpose. The new controller’s high-precision embedded sensors detect the sensitive movements of the hands, and the PlayStation Eye tracks the sphere on the controller to precisely detect the position in real-life 3D space.

“Another huge benefit of having a controller comes from being able to trigger abstract actions with a simple button press. This is very important, because this event triggering capability is complementary to the spatial input provided by the tracking, and some experiences need both.

“No matter how good our visual tracking might become, the feeling you get from actually squeezing something physical is a better simulation than just positioning your finger. This relates to an interface phenomenon I call “somatic gratification”. The feeling of the interaction can be just as important as the effectiveness.

Marks went on to say that Sony is looking into the possibility of incorporating familiar characters and franchises with the peripheral, and while the new controller will be out sometime during spring 2010, further details, along with a name, will be provided an official announcement is made.

Sony has been showing off its new motion controller to devs and publishers lately, and apparently it can do all sorts of things.

For starters, it has force feedback rumble, works across all genres of titles, face and head tracking will be realized with the camera that it comes with, and it can track up to four motion controllers at one time.

Now we just need a damn name for it. Some reports are calling it the Sony Wand at the moment.

That just sounds a bit, well, naughty to us.

More over at Gamasutra.

Thanks, MaxConsole.

Sony bossman Jack Tretton says that it’s “absolutely conceivable” that company’s new motion controller will be compatible with the present library of games on PS3.

“I think our [motion] controller can be used with every game that’s on the system now,” he told CNBC, “and every game we’re working on.”

He also says that the new controller will be more “flexible and diverse” than the WiiMote.

“Personally, it’s very difficult for me to perceive God of War 3 being played with the Wii controller,” he said. “It’s a different experience that doesn’t lend itself to certain types of games.”

Via Joystiq.

Satoru Iwata has told the Financial Times that Nintendo previously fiddled around with camera-based motion controls and decided to pass on ‘em.

The firm eventually decided that “accelerometer-based technology”, like what’s in the WiiMote, worked better.

Iwata admitted, however, that the company will wait and see what Microsoft and Sony do before regretting the decision.

“Until they say when they’re releasing it, how much it costs and what software it comes with, we won’t know whether that is the route we should have taken,” he said.

Via Engadget.

EA boss John Riccitiello has stated that the firm’s development team almost invested in motion control similar to Natal, but Microsoft were the first out of the gate with it.

“We almost invested to create a platform extension like that for some of the games we’re working on,” Riccitiello told Kotaku. “We’re very pleased, frankly, that it showed up at Microsoft, because I’d rather them pay for that. They can leverage it better, and we can build software. But I felt the market wanted that technology and I’m glad it’s coming.

“We were looking at a camera system. In fact we were looking at the camera system they ended up going with. That technology’s pretty compelling. I don’t think it applies to all genres of games. We thought packing it with some things we’re working on in our studios, maybe sports and music, made a lot of sense.”

Regarding Sony’s motion controller, Riccitiello said that EA noticed the same technology a couple of years ago, and claims the company introduced Sony to it.

“I’ve been playing with that and it is cool,” he said. “We saw that two years ago. In fact, I think we introduced Sony to it.”

He goes on to talk about how not all games, like FIFA, would benefit from Natal because a “75-minute session would be frigging tiring.”

More through the link.

Sony has already started handing out development kits for its new motion-sensing controller.

Marketing exec Peter Dille confirmed this to Gamspot during E3, and also told the site that the technology is a lot further along that what has been presumed.

“We’re a little bit past the research phase,” said Dille. “We’re having conversations with the third-party community. The dev kits have started to go out to the third parties as well. They’re working on the tech. They couldn’t be more excited about it.”

Still no exact date on this, although many Sony reps have stated that it’s expected in Spring 2010.

Peter Moore says that EA already had a look at both Natal and Sony’s motion controller months ago, and the company is already scouting ways to take advantage of both in the fitness realm.

“We’ve seen both Natal and the motion controller from Sony several months ago,” he told Gamasutra. “So we’re already looking at opportunities to bring both our licensed product and our fitness product to these new controller mechanisms.”

Moore also reiterated what John Koller said in an earlier interview about sometimes needing a device in your hand, and he attributes this to “gesture control”.

However, boxing games like Fight Night would benefit highly from an hand-less device.

“We’re constantly evaluating,” he added. “I think what you’ve got to do with Natal in particular is you’ve got to come up with new experiences that feel natural without something being held or something on your body. And that’s going to be the key to successful software for Natal.”

More through the link.