PS3 Motion Controller Demoed by SCEE at Develop Conference

200w ago - As expected, Sony Europe has demonstrated its PlayStation 3 Motion Controller at the Develop Conference in Brighton... which runs from July 14 to 16, 2009.

At SCEE's coding keynote presentation, the company stressed that the hardware is still a prototype. The PS3 Motion Controller was shown with the same Zelda-style bow and arrow demo seen at E3.

To quote: Sitting in the front row, our impressions of the motion mapping indicate that the system definitely has room for improvement; the spatial accuracy of the pulling back of the bow didn't match the on-screen action precisely, and other wii-like inaccuracies were obvious.

That said, there's plenty of time for SCEE to get it right, and we were lucky to see the controller at all given that it spent the last four days in customs after getting shipped in from the US.

"It can track true 3D, whereever I move it will fully track on every axis," explained SCEE developer services boss Kish Hirani.

In a demo of the archery game shown at E3, SCEE's Colin Hughes explained more:

"We're not getting any lag, which we had with the camera-based stuff on PS3 before. It is very quick and responsive."

The mix of camera tracking and hardware means that the device is 'aware' even when it isn't being seen by the camera.

"It tracks the controller based on acceleromoter - so you can use it really freely, even behind your back," said Hirani. "You have great accuracy."

He added: "There's a whole spectrum of things you can do with this controller.