When it comes to motion

Mar 16, 2010 13:17 GMT  ·  By

Sony has officially named its motion controller the PlayStation Move and the release date is still set for the fall of 2010, in time for the holidays, with support coming in the form of SOCOM 4 and a host of more casual titles.

Microsoft has for some time said that Project Natal is also coming during the fall, with Fable III likely being the standard-bearer when it comes to the experience it can deliver. With both Sony and Microsoft getting into motion tracking, one would expect Nintendo to be on its back heel, looking for a way to keep players from fleeing to the new devices attached to the old consoles.

Talking to the Kotaku blog, Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, went on the offensive, saying that “I think we would have been embarrassed to do what our competitors are currently doing,” adding that “all I can tell you is that we will innovate. We will provide something new. Something that the consumer and the industry will look at and say, 'Wow, I didn't see that coming'.”

The Nintendo Wii is the biggest selling home console of the current generation, managing during some time frames to actually outsell the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 combined on the all-important United States market. Much of that success is linked to how easy it is to pick up a Wii-based videogame and just play it, with the Wiimote and the Nunchuk able to deliver control schemes easier to understand than standard controllers.

The weakness of the Wii is its limited processing power, which makes it incapable of matching rival consoles in terms of graphics. With the PS3 and the Xbox 360 getting motion tracking capabilities, it would make sense for Nintendo to answer by offering High Definition graphics for its own product, although that would probably just be a stop gap solution.