When Sony announced their very own evolution of the Wii Remote this year at E3, nobody was particularly surprised. After all, even Microsoft joined the fray with it’s no-controller motion controller system, Project Natal (oh, but for a cooler name), and let’s face it: Nintendo’s more than proven that motion control in some form is the way forward for video game interaction. At this point, it would be more shocking if the big boys didn’t leap in and try to parrot Nintendo; after all, they’ve managed to nearly outsell the two combined.
With that said, I can’t claim to have seen this one coming: The Wii Remote…now for Playstation 3. Luckily Sony’s not exactly behind this (it’s coming from Blaze Products Europe), because oh how the fanboys would howl. No doubt there’s a collective sigh of relief at Sony HQ today, the kind that comes with the ability to smile and say “wasn’t us!” As you can see from the diagram at left, the new “BLAZE PS3™ Motion Freedom 3D Controller” (yeah, I copied and pasted, so sue me) is virtually identical to the Wii Remote, with the sole exception being the addition of a ton of buttons (wonder how often they’ll get pressed by your palm while swinging a virtual tennis racket or baseball–err, cricket bat).
The description isn’t clear as to whether it has a pointer functionality to it or not, nor does it tell us whether it has the full range of detection found in the Wii’s Motion Plus adapter, so we’ll just have to sit on our hands and wait for more info. In the meantime…sit back and chuckle a bit as the “fad” migrates to the “big boy” consoles.