Sony on Tuesday demonstrated a prototype motion-sensing videogame controller, as the maker of PlayStation consoles joined rivals in a trend away from playing with complicated buttons and joysticks.
Sony Computer Entertainment researcher Richard Marks provided a glimpse of the prototype controller at the Japanese firm’s press conference at the opening of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
“Its more distinct and cool feature is a glowing sphere on the end that the PlayStation 3 eye can track,” said Marks, as a colleague wielded what looked like a pair of television remote controls with lights on the tips.
The camera tracked the player’s movements and software translated his movements to onscreen characters wielding swords, racquets, flashlights, maces, guns, baseball bats, and other implements.
“We want to enable gamers,” Marks said. “We expect very casual players.”
Nintendo is credited with opening the videogame market to new legions of “casual” players with family-friendly Wii consoles launched in 2006.
Nintendo on Tuesday showed off Wii MotionPlus gizmos that enhance the precision of the consoles’ motion-sensing wand controllers.
Wii offers controllers shaped like television remotes, car steering wheels, guns and bathroom scales.
Nintendo said it would release Wii MotionPlus gadgets, essentially cubes that plug into bases of the consoles’ wand-shaped controllers, in the US on July 26.
French videogame powerhouse Ubisoft is releasing a Your Shape videogame designed for Wii that uses a camera to scan players’ bodies and replicate them onscreen, where a virtual trainer coaches them through exercise routines.
Ubisoft said it worked with Nintendo to develop a camera to scan players’ body shapes into consoles for an exercise game that gauges what shape people are in, lets them set fitness goals and tracks progress.
Microsoft said on Monday it had been secretly developing technology that lets people play videogames using natural body movements instead of handheld controllers.
It revealed a prototype of a project code named “Natal,” a system that combines cameras and voice and face recognition software to recognize people and their actions.
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