Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Tennis anyone?

The game console wars are hotting up. Microsoft, the late comer to the battlefield made a preemptive strike last year with the XBox 360. Now Sony and Nintendo have revealed their new consoles at E3 and allowed journalists to play with them. It will be the second half of the year before the consoles actually make it to the shops but both have an interesting feature, motion sensors in their controllers.

Sony are the more traditional, their new Playstation 3 controller apparently has a motion sensor that detects the way players moves the controller and reacts accordingly. Watch someone playing a racing game and you will see what they mean. If someone wants to go faster around the corner they instinctively move the controller in that direction. They also tilt their heads as if to compensate for g-forces, maybe there is an EyeToy function there? Follow this link for Engadgets photos of the presentation.

But the really revolutionary idea is Nintendos. The Nintendo Wii, formally Nintendo revolution has a unique controller that looks like a TV remote control. They have a bunch of sensors in it to allow people to use it like a tennis racket, golf club, fly fishing rod etc. Don't believe me? I don't blame you, I didn't believe it either, I thought it was an early advertising gimmick. But check out Engadget, they have lots of photographs with people playing tennis and golf with the new controller, I linked to some above. They also have photos of the Playstation 3. Bizarre, but interesting, at least for gamers.

[via Engadget]

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i'm good at racket ball