It's a fancy Wii-mote with a glowy ball. Who cares? Plus the scrubs who did the demo back in E3 left me thoroughly unimpressed. That kid apparently never played Wii Sports Tennis .. Fail.

They need to bundle this with the system.

Motion controllers require more elaborate movement of (human) body than normal gaming pads.

Beavis -- Yeah, if you want to go play basketball, go play basketball. But if you want to duel to the death by sword with a 7'5" lunatic...I think motion controls are a safer bet. Probably more fun, too. Probably.

DJ -- Good points. Everyone fell in love with Natal...and it may have a lot going for it, but it could also end up being a glorified Eye Toy. A wand motion controller has a LOT of potential (just look at how great Tiger Woods 10 was this year on Wii).

Anywho, competition should bring out the best in everyone. I hope Sony's wand pushes Nintendo (and Microsoft) to do bigger and better things, and vice versa.

That said, look how long it took for devs to get Wii controls right (some still can't). There's a definite learning curve.

Natal's fatal flaw is that it has almost a half second of lag. That is what sony was taking a stab at when they said there is no lag like previous camera based setups. Even eyetoy had lag. The new setup does not. You can watch natal's demos, and there is a clear and present lag (I even have photo proof from a pic we took at the MS press conference, where you can see the girl with her leg in the air and her avatar is standing on both feet still). That, coupled with the fact that natal still glitches badly (orange jumpsuits anyone? or how about BAM! there it isn't...), and no. it is not farther along than PSMC at all. Even if developers have devkits, they do NOT have final hardware and they have to work with the lag and glitches when making their games, which will severely impede their ability to do so. PSMC's setup is already finalized save for the actual look of the controller, which has no effect on it's gameplay. So, PS3's setup is much farther along in that regard. For that reason, we'll see better games come out faster for PS3's motion controller.

As for the lazy ones out there, PS3's setup at least only requires that you use your arms (though it can track the full body, as seen in the FPS demo where it tracked the guy as he walked around the room and ducked).

As for cost, sony makes cameras... keep that in mind. they have many plants that make the internal components for cameras, so pseye is dirt cheap to them. all they have to do is bundle it with one cheap wand controller, and they could probably sell it for $50. PSeye itself is only $30 retail, so you know it costs sony much less than that. Natal on the other hand, is third party hardware (costs MS more), and we all know how they like to overprice their accessories, so you'll be lucky to see it for under $70.

Even care about motion control? I mean I see the marketing hype already for both Natal and the Wand, but the thing I don't see are games or even sincere developer interest. I think there is going to be quite the backlash from fans of the 360 and PS3 because they bought the system for what it offers now, and Motion controls were a gimmicky fad that they wanted no part of.

I suppose we'll see how it turns out. But what people sometimes overlook is it is not quite as simple as "Oh Wii has motion controls and sells like hot cakes, if we add motion controls we will sell like hot cakes" What sold the Wii wasn't the technology of motion controls, but the games that utilized motion controls.

ah, being able to read the controller behind people, i saw that in the 2003 stanford video that dr richard marks did with the ball and butterflies but i didnt even pick up on it at e3-09 when the other guy pulled the arrow from behind his back, very subtle yet impressive touch

any word yet from microsoft on the ability shoot infrared lights through people in order to sense motion behind people? a terrible joke, yeah i know

This tech may be the most accurate and very advanced motion controller, but it all becomes irrelevant if Sony does not properly promote it. How do you educate the consumers that this is a lot different from the Wii-mote? Sure a lot of us here are more informed, but if Sony doesn't put the same efforts as MS with Project Natal, then it's gonna end up being another neglected peripheral like the PSEye.

The Sony controller has some serious potential. Here's to hoping they do it right.

still looks retarded to me. How the hell can they be sure that the eyetoy will not get confused every time the light goes into your lap? They basicly reversed nintendos method. The wiimote has an infared camera that tracks 2 infared lights on top of the tv. All sony did was make a peripheral that is a backwards wiimote that uses an earlier sony failure. Nintendo already said they have tried this tech before and deemed it not as good.

Also I'd sooner wait for a wii HD then buy a $200-$400 gaming system then pay 100-150 more for the add-on to bring next gen controls with hd into my home. Never mind having to buy a 60 dollar game to make it even worth my time. It just sounds too costly when for 250 even you still get a console with motion controls included and a game. and adding an extra 50 bucks you can get RE4 wii, No more heroes and Red steel.

"Every one excited about this sony controller should answer this question what happened to the motion controls in the main controller? Why is that not really even supported now? When is SONY going to make good on their work rather than push all the expectation on to some thing new? "

after 3 or 4 biased "facts", i have to reply ;)

the motion control of the siaxsix is a free bonus, and it's allways supported
by the way, sony make already good, with theirs own stuffs and creativity..not like ms, obliged to buy games, exclusivity and obsolete camera tech : and don't think is nothing for ms, it's not cheap, and ms gaming division, is not ms commercial power....sony had a hard time with ps3 productions cost, but now bluray success + games sold, psn product = big money)