Playstation Move: or how else would we have made the controller?

[stof]

It's funny watching this argument go around in circles.

On the copy/ripoff side, there are three main arguments

1. Holly crap they look identical, they even have a nunchuck!? It's pretty rediculous how Sony copied the form factor and I don't see how this one can be argued.

2. Sony repeatedly chastised, mocked and dismissed the Wiimote, pretty much right up until they announced their own. It's not like they ever said "Actually, Sony values motion controls and have been working on it a long time. We're just not quite ready yet"

3. The PS3 got absolutely clobbered by the Wii so this is Sony's attempt to do what Nintendo's console was. Does anyone here actually believe that the Move would have come out if not for the Wii? If one company says "We're going to do what their doing", that's copying.

On the "Not a copy" side I see two arguments

1. They were working on the technology in 2003. So? I'm not going to get in to an argument over who developed some technology first. Hell, companies were working on things that work similar to Mii's and Avatars in the gameboy and snes days. But those things never actually made it out. It doesn't matter when Nintendo started working on motion controls (I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.), but what matters is Nintendo not only released it, but made it viable in the market so that other companies would feel obliged to copy it.

2. The technology is different/better. Well yeah! If it was the exact same technology they'd get sued. But an electric car is still a car. Employing different means to achieve the same thing is still achieving the same thing. And yes it can do more than the Wiimote. Notice how it came out years after the Wiimote? If my R&D department has the mandate of "Here's a Wiimote that was designed off of tech that's a couple years old now. Make something that works better with our technology" that's what you're going to do. I imagine Nintendo also has a lot of tech that works better than the Wiimote right now.



Too many people are getting caught up on this whole Sony had motion technology before thing. If it weren't for the Wii, Move and it's technology might never have seen the light of day.