Finally, we get a more detailed look at the next contender in the motion-control battle of the consoles, the PlayStation Move. Our first glimpse at this year's GDC came in the form of a trailer from Sony in which they took the Nintendo approach to showing people playing with the controller except stepped it up a notch by stylizing certain portions of the trailer to give it a more advanced look. This theme of taking a Nintendo idea and expanding on it seemed to be present throughout the conference. Sony even congratulated Nintendo on what they've done so far.



However, we don't particularly care about who did what first as long as we're getting the best experience available and have spent our money wisely. So that means that the technology is going to have to be top-notch and have great games to go along with it. Sony demoed multiple games to try and show just what the move is capable of.

They showed off Brunswick Bowling, which is your standard bowling game, and it showed in the game. If you've seen a bowling game played on the Wii, then you've seen it played on Move as it is exactly the same thing. There do not appear to be any differences here.

SOCOM 4 was also on display and with it was the demonstration of the Sub-controller add-on which can be compared to the Nunchuk attachment for the Wii Remote, except it's wireless now. Depending on which demo you're observing, the Move controller appears to either be incredibly responsive or display a noticeable lag of the cursor, and a very slow turn rate. This actually makes me hopeful because it indicates that there is some level of customization to the controls.

There's a sports compilation game called Sports Champions which is essentially the PlayStation Move version of the Wii Sports and the sequel, Wii Sports Resort. The games included in this are ping-pong, archery, and a gladiator mode. Each mode appears to be very responsive to what the players are doing whether its a swing, a blocking motion, or a simple drawing of the string.

A fighting game was also on display, and this one was not 1:1 like a lot of the other games on display. This was a bit disappointing considering the what had been done with the gladiator game, but perhaps this is a strategic decision.

Overall, the PlayStation Move looks to be very promising. We need to see more games that utilize it in a manner beyond simple mini-games though. Sony is aiming for the crowd that Nintendo went for, and I'm doubtful about their possible success. The device is a $100 add-on to an already $300 machine. In addition to the price issue, the multiple buttons crowding the Move can be daunting to non-gamers. Only time will tell the outcome of this endeavor.