Sony Gets a Move On with New Motion-Sensitive Game System
Latest Gadgets
Clearly one of the hottest new tech products on the market today is the Sony Move, a fresh peripheral for the Japanese company's popular PlayStation 3 video game console. For four years now the Nintendo Wii has virtually owned the gaming market because of its motion-sensitive gameplay, where actual movements made by a player are mimicked on-screen. Now, Sony tries to narrow the market gap between itself and the Big N with the Move, a device that, some might argue, essentially rips off the Wii. Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess. Let's take a closer look at the Move.
Like the Wii, the PlayStation Move uses a special hand-held controller to track movement. Sensors line the interior of a golf ball-sized orb attached to the end of a device that closely resembles a standard TV remote, and moving this object in open space (in front of Sony's motion-sensor camera, the PlayStation Eye) is reproduced on screen in a variety of interesting scenarios. Several of the games tread ground familiar to Wii owners: Sports Champions, for example, feels a lot like Wii Sports, which shipped with the Nintendo system way back in 2006.
But you have to be impressed with the sheer potential Sony has going for it: unlike the Wii, which underwhelms techies and gamers alike with last-generation, standard-definition visuals, the PlayStation 3 is a beast, boasting 1080p HD graphics and an enormous range of game franchises to improve upon. Early adopters of the Move will soon find a slew of games that once used only the standard PlayStation controller outfitted with new control options, including titles like Heavy Rain and SOCOM. The latter, a modern-day first-person shooter, will bring motion-sensitive gameplay to more "mature" games and gamers. It's a market most older gamers feel Nintendo has willingly ignored, and in all likelihood it's a big reason that PlayStation 3 sales are generally on an incline; Wii sales... not so much.
But not all is well in PlayStation land. Early reviews complain that the Move controller is not particularly accurate, meaning movements off-screen are not properly recreated on-screen. Then there's the issue of originality: if PlayStation gamers really wanted to use a motion-sensitive game system, wouldn't they have just bought a Nintendo Wii several years ago? By contrast, rival Microsoft is stepping up the competition by offering the Kinect, a device that uses no controller at all but instead tracks the movement of a player's entire body.
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