Oh dear – Sony unveil dull new controller
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Bells! Whistles! Fireworks! Sony have launched a revolutionary new controller! And it’s a lot like Nintendo’s three-year-old Wii controller! Oh…
The Playstation Move was unveiled to some not-whooping delegates at San Francisco’s Games Developers Conference late yesterday and Sony marketing boss Peter Dille harrumphed: “We’d like to think of this as the next generation of motion gaming. We are confident that when we look back in five years time, this will be seen as a seminal moment for PlayStation.” Possibly the moment when it all went tits up?
The controller uses motion control technology and the Playstation Eye camera to track body movements, in almost the exact same way as a Wiimote, except this thing has a big coloured ball stuck on the end like a clown’s nose.
With Microsoft readying themselves for the launch of their Natal control system, where the player becomes the controller, the Playstation Move seems like a backwards step. The projected price tag of almost £50 doesn’t do it any favours either.
We weren’t there in person because Famous Rich And Jobless was on last night but the UK editor of GameSpot, Guy Cocker was there, and he told the BBC: “I was disappointed with the amount of real innovation we saw. In terms of ideas, it is very similar to what we have seen with the Wii and if you are Sony, you can’t help but want to ape that success.” It was a useful critique from Guy as it made us stop thinking about this shitty controller for a minute and got us thinking about apes instead.
Apes are fascinating aren’t they readers?




According to the media, yesterday marked the end of the world for Playstation 3 owners. An unknown error meant players couldn’t connect to the Playstation Network and, depending on what you read, wiped play data from thousands of consoles, causing many a thumb-twiddling mummy’s boy to break down to floods of tears (it didn’t really though, did it?).



The plot thickens in the row over BBC1’s Watchdog and their cack-handed coverage of the PS3 and its Yellow Light Of Death since we brought you an update yesterday.
Two weeks into its much-heralded return and things are going rapidly tits up for BBC1’s blockbusting Watchdog show. The show’s production team have been attacked by Sony and hordes of PS3 users after what they claim was an unfair and inaccurate section of last week’s show.
In fact, the Xbox 360’s Red Ring Of Death is believed to be about five times more common than the Yellow Light Of Death on the PS3 – something which Microsoft eventually acknowledged when they extended the Xbox warranty length to three years. The PS3 warranty is still only for one year.
What will be the hot games console this Christmas that stores will fail to order enough stock of and manufacturers will severely under-estimate demand for? Which brand will make itself deliberately scarce in December to create sensational headlines and impact on national news running orders with footage of pissed-off parents camping outside 

feral trolley of the week