E3: Sony Unveils Its Own Motion Sensitive Controls

The Nintendo Wii is the most popular console currently available on the market, managing to overtake its main rivals, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, even though it isn't as powerful in terms of hardware. Its success and big sales have made its rivals take note of its innovations and try to replicate them for their own devices.

As such, we saw yesterday Microsoft revealing Project Natal, which is its own take on motion tracking and sensitive controls. Now, as Sony has just held its own E3 press conference, the LiveMove 2 Freeform Motion Control system, which will basically consist of a Wii remote-like device and a PlayStation Eye camera.

The tech demo revealed at E3 featured Dr. Richard Marks revealing the small remote and how it can take the virtual form of many objects, from baseball bats to swords or guns, with a very high degree of precision. The remote that has “a variety of buttons and motion sensors” also sports a glowing orb on the end that the PlayStation Eye camera can track. Marks then picked up another remote and demoed a bow firing simulation as he used one remote instead of the hand that held the bow and another instead of the one pulling back the arrow. 

The Live Move 2 Freeform Motion Control system is set to offer “continuous motion control by integrating motion recognition with motion tracking,” and will be ready to be incorporated in a variety of simulations that use gestured-based elements like sword fighting, dancing or martial arts.

Sony has already announced that it has partnered with AiLive, which is the middleware co-developer behind the upcoming Wii Motion Plus, and would ship it to game developers across the world. Here is what Masayuki Chatani, EVP and CTO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., commented on the announcement, “The LiveMove 2 development tool is the premier solution for recognizing human gestures in games, I am very happy to be able to make this revolutionary tool available to all PlayStation 3 developers. We eagerly look forward to the new and engaging game experiences developers will create for the PlayStation 3 with the help of LiveMove.”

Are you interested in this new type of motion controls? Here's the first part of the tech demo showed by Sony at E3. Do you think it will be more successful than the one on the Wii or even than Microsoft's Project Natal? Leave us a comment with your decision.