Euro PS3 to lack motion sensing

[rounin]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/02/23/euro_ps3/

London (England) - In an effort to scale back the prohibitive cost of the PS3, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) is removing a couple features for the official launch next month. Hardware cut-backs will result in the removal of motion sensitive technology and will limit the backward compatibility of the system.

 

[infinity4]

what??? is it Sics-ac-sis they are removing now??? what is motion sensing tech???

 

[deathkiller]

Sounds like BS.

 

[nonamer]

Tom's hardware needs an editor.

 

[Rainbow Man]

What? People still visit Tom's hardware?

That place hasn't been worth the bother since roughly around the turn of the century.

Peace.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Another victim of 21st century Rush-Journalism. Quite where they get the idea motion tech is gone is lost on me, when they reference the press-release that the rest of the world managed to read correctly.

Move along people. Nothing to see here.

 

[INKster]

The original news post has been edited (read the last sentence).
Maybe it's THG UK who needs an editor...

 

[rounin]

Well its the UK division. If anyone knows English it should be the people who live where it came from!

I was just as surprised as everyone else and hope this isn't true.

 

[Carl B]

I was just as surprised as everyone else and hope this isn't true.

It's not. Does it even sound plausible?

 

[Acert93]

It's not. Does it even sound plausible?

Did it seem plausible that... after trumpeting backwards compatibility for the PS3 (E3 2005: thousands of PS2 titles, over ten thousand PS1 titles) and doing a bang up job on MS's poor BC and how they were putting hardware in the PS3 to ensure BC... to then rip EE+GSt out of the PAL model and go with softwre emulation that even the PR notes isn't nearly as robust as well as stating up front that most of their efforts would be on the PS3 side and not BC.

I absolutely don't think they will remove motion sensing. It is fairly cheap, they have been pushing developers to support it which could mess up some games in design, and it is their bridge to the "touch" generation and is their own evolutionary input development and is necessary marketing wise to makeup for rumble. But most of all it won't be removed because there will be Japanese and American games that use the feature, and if any fundamental gameplay dynamics are based upon such the PAL version may not be very good or even possible. So that would neuter support for SixAxis in JP/NA, but also harm game quality in PAL territories. HORRIBLE move that Sony absolutely wouldn't do. And if this were true it would push Shifty over to the Wii, so I don't see it happening at all.

Yet in general we have seen some really odd moves from a number of companies, some totally unexpected and outright shocking. Even direct about faces. Sony market planning and PR hasn't proven to be immune to such puzzling flip flops... as if the two were not even coherantly communicating. It wouldn't be totally shocking for Sony to market a feature (Dual HDMI? Complete BC? Dual Ethernet?) as a selling point over the competition and then drop it from the hardware. The point? Sony's own PR psychosis leaves them open to such rumors--as crazy as they sound. When you have an unfocused message and your public communications keep altering past plans it does sow seeds of confusion and doubt which open you up to be the victim of nasty rumors.

Btw, if by some "Hell just froze over" 1 in a trillion chance this is true and the PS3 in Europe lacks motion sensing it would be the official sign that Sony management has imploded and they might as well hire chimps to run the show from here on out. Heck, they might as well hire Carl and myself to run the show if it is true. Absolutely crazy rumor that cannot have any basis in truth.