Sony's New Motion Controller

I've met a guy who's working on stuff for the Sony motion controllers, and though I haven't spoken to him directly about it, his bro-in-law was telling me that when they played Wii Sports Resort together, he liked it, but thought his own company's stuff works better. That's the test right there. If it's at least as good as Wii, it's good enough.

I can easily see how parts of Wii Sports Resort could be improved with the PS3 setup. The archery game doesn't have 1:1 controls for drawing back the bow string, so you don't have fine control over the speed of the arrow. Swordplay could have have a fencing foil or other type of thin blade that wouldn't easily be seen on an SD Wii with no AA. More accurate depth detection (when combined with precise collision detection) would make parries and thrusts meaningful instead of having the game degrade to a wagglefest. 3 point shooting would sense both hands and the wrist action that indicates spin and follow-through.

 

The problem is: Sony's and Nintendo's natural interface approach is multi-controller. In Sony's case, it includes "no controller" or "hands free controller".

So it's all too easy to confuse our topic. We are talking about different things here. I think Shifty is skeptical of the emotion recognition, which should be the predominant stand since we haven't seen it in action yet.

Personally, I am more intrigued by how the systems recognize human actions (like yawning, hi-5). If it works reasonably well, all the major vendors (Microsoft, Apple, Toshiba, Matsushita, etc.) will use it in one way or another in the future. It's not something that's exclusive to Sony.

 

No no no! If the game can hear that we are shouting all the time whenever they make the wrong call and they want to implement it like in the real life, chances are that you're going to get more frustrated because the ref probably going to give you a yellow card... or probably a red card if you shout foul words. Instead of you enjoying the game, you'll become more annoyed and angry just like in real life... feel the immersion!

And add the motion detection stuff where they can detect if you do an unsportsmanlike behavior (like you're making a punching or shoving motion).. that would be perfect to test your patience.

 

Thanks to Titanio, the patent for Sony's robot UI is: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090037023.pdf

It was first mentioned by Siliconera here: http://www.siliconera.com/2009/03/18/sony-computer-entertainment-making-a-robot-accessory/ but they did not link to the patent. The invention is an interpretation of the robot's movement (from the user's perspective) mapped to a display screen.
e.g., The robot can execute movements relating to a video game controlled by the user.

 

The PlayStation blog has a video of the R&D representative talking about it.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009...scenes-with-scea-research-development-part-1/

 

They mention their in-house titles only, right? LBP and RE5 are third party.

 

Thats quite a few games for just 1st party. Wonder if they will show any of these off during TGS

 

Sony did publish LBP though?

Plus, didn't Sony buy Media Molecule?

 

pretty sure its still privately held. maybe confused with guerrilla games which they did eventually end up buying.

 

Sony and MM have a deal to make 3 games exclusively on the PS3 platform.After that, MM is free to develop on any another platform it wants.Honestly, I believe LBP is perhaps, the PS3's best game.I love it.....

 

Wow... I never knew that... I was sure Sony bought them. Especially since they've pretty much made Sack-boy the poster child for all things playstation.

If i was Sony i'd snap them up straight away... Does Sony own the LBP IP though?

 

You can't snap them up if they don't want to sell.

 

I believe Sony helped the MM guys setup the company etc, so I guess they got some very decent connections. Not sure who owns LBP ip, but it might be Sony already.

 

The final design. Confirmed for next Spring.

 

no pun intended, but do you have source?
I saw this during TGS but I never knew it was the final design.

 

looks expensive. i think attach rate will be low.

 

How much does the Wiimote cost?

 

$40 for the remote & $20 for the nunchuk. Buy Wii Play for $50 get the remote free.

It does look expensive considering you have to have the camera. Maybe that's why they didn't put a d-pad or thumbstick on it? I'm still shaking my head over that oversight. I also still can't get over the light bulb. I could make all kinds of comparisons... Personally I think they should have went with a different technology that didn't require a camera. The Gametrack Freedom seemed like a better alternative. Doesn't need any camera & doesn't require pointing. Much more elegant.

Tommy McClain