Sony PlayStation Move motion controller revealed

Sony’s motion controller for the PS3 which was first unveiled at E3 in 2009 now has a final design along with an official name. At the Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2010 the company officially announced the PlayStation Move motion controller touting its precision and calling it the “next generation of motion gaming”. The controller integration into games or the tracking algorithms still need to get polished a bit.

The controller works in combination with the PlayStation Eye camera which tracks the controller’s glowing “light sphere” in three dimensions and that is the key to the Move’s accuracy. The light sphere also changes color in order to give some visual feedback from the game into our world. Sony also unveiled a Subcontroller that includes analogue stick input to function like a wireless version of Nintendo’s Nunchuk controller. For first person shooters (FPS) like the upcoming SOCOM 4 the Move controller is used to control the camera, while the Subcontroller is used to control the character.

“We like to think that the migration path between Wii households and PlayStation households is a natural path,” said Peter Dille, Sony’s senior vice president for marketing and PlayStation. He added that Move offers greater precision than current motion controllers, with controller latency under one frame.

Sony is hoping to appeal to a wide range of gamers including the casual gamers that the Wii has been so successful with, as well as more hardcore gamers for whom accuracy and responsiveness is key. Games like DUKES and the medieval dueling in Sports Champions will require two PlayStation Move controllers unless you fancy yourself and think you can fight well enough with just one hand.

Many existing franchises such as SOCOM will also be enhanced with PlayStation Move functionality. Sony says it is also able to add Move functionality to existing games such as LittleBigPlanet without compromising graphical quality or gameplay because of the Move’s low performance impact on the PS3 system.

The Move, which will be available this fall in a starter kit which consists of a PlayStation Eye camera, Move controller and a “starter disc” of demos of upcoming games that begins at under $100, is Sony’s attempt to jump ahead of Microsoft’s Natal and winning over some of the Wii users.