Playstation Move announced at GDC 2010

Instead of drawing comic, I was watching the stream of Sony’s GDC 2010 Press Conference where they announced Playstation Move, their answer to Nintendo Wii motion control. Sony’s solution requires three gadgets, Playstation Eye camera, Playstation Move motion controller and Playstation Move sub-controller. Yes, they are calling it ‘sub-controller’. For the longest time, medias were referring to Move as Arc. You can tell that the changed to Move was a last minute effort because the current logo is shaped like A for ‘Arc’ I presumed.

On the first look, Sony’s solution looks like a blatant copy of Nintendo’s. The funny spherical orb on top of Move appears to be Sony's solution to avoid a Nintendo lawsuit. However, if you have been following GDC for a very long time Sony Eyetoy team had demo this concept long before Nintendo revealed Wii. I remember the Sony Team demo Eyetoy using two spherical coloured red and blue on sticks with virtual creature resembling something like Eyepet, as well as pouring virtual water using glasses via Eyetoy. It left an impression on me. I guess the head at Sony did not see the potential of this technology until Nintendo showed them how.

In the presentation, they rather admitted to Nintendo innovation. If it were I presenting, I would not admit to it. I would present the history of Eyetoy instead, make sure everyone know who had the technology first. Than again the demo reel that followed was rather embarrassing since it was Nintendo inspired (read rip-off) rather than something interesting or original. They did not know what to do with the technology five years ago and they certainly did not know what to do with it today. It was quite sad, I am very sure that the audience had déjà vu to Nintendo E3 2006 presentation.

Now looking at their implementation I hope they would change the spec before release. Sony needs to combine Playstation Move and sub-controller into a single controller. If a game need the use of the sub-controller, player can use two Playstation Move instead. Currently the sub-crontroller does not have the spherical orb. The Playstation Move lacks any d-pad, analog stick and a second trigger button.

We all know that add-on peripherals are difficult to gain support and traction. For Sony sake, I hope they can manufacture the components cheap enough that their solution becomes standard controller with every PS3 sold, as well as plenty of good games for it.