Sony has just unveiled its latest weapon in the closely fought console war with Nintendo and Microsoft.
It's called the Move controller, and Sony claims it's an improvement on the technology in Nintendo's Wii,
which allows you to play games using the controller's own sensors to track your own movements.
Now, Sony has some catching up to do.
As of the end of June, Sony had sold just over 38 million PlayStation 3s worldwide.
That's still behind, but closing the gap on Microsoft's Xbox 360,
which has global sales of almost 42 million, and the Xbox has appealed to the hardcore gaming community.
But both trail far behind the Wii, with a whopping 71 million units sold since its debut in 2006,
largely due to the success of those wireless controllers, which have made the Wii popular with families,
although perhaps less popular with serious gamers.
Well our Colleen McEdwards went to find out how the new Move actually works.
Joining me now is Richard Marks with Sony to explain what this and all of this actually does.
Come on in here. Tell us about PlayStation Move.
This is our new controller for PlayStation 3.
It combines our PlayStation Eye camera and internal sensors in our controller to give a new way to play PlayStation 3.
Now how...who are you targeting with this new product?
Actually, we're targeting everybody.
We have very casual experiences for people who have never played games,
but because it's so precise and responsive, we also have games that would appeal to people who are really good at games -- core players.
Ok, I have a seven-year-old. We have a Wii. We play it as a family. We love it,
but show me what this can do. I'm curious to see. Let's have a look.
Ok, maybe the first thing you see right away is that we use our camera,
so we can actually take video of the player and use the controller [to] insert virtual objects right into the video.
One of our games called Start the Party actually does this very well where you can switch between lots of different objects, do different things.
Things are flying at you. You have to hit them with a stick or you...
I'm still getting used to myself standing here with this giant sword.
Yeah, this is called augmented reality. You see yourself and you also see virtual objects rendered in with us.
So I can switch between...if you push the big middle button, the move button there, you can switch between many different objects.
You see, my seven-year-old would have this figured out already. Ah!
It could be sports games; it could be a fighting game.
You can do all sorts of different things. Of course, we wouldn't have to see video of ourselves.
We could switch it to more of a normal virtual experience where you just see the object that you're holding,
but the video really shows you how well it's tracking. It's rendering it right over the top of the controller perfectly.
So you think the hardcore gamer is gonna see a difference between this
and what you would get in a Wii with your controller playing tennis or, you know, lightsaber duels, or whatever you're doing?
Definitely, the accuracy and the responsiveness is [are] very different.
So why is Sony coming out with this now. It's such a difficult economy. How concerned are you about that?
We decided to make PlayStation Move when we could make the kind of experience we wanted to for both our casual and core players.
But also I think now is a great time for our PlayStation 3. It's a great value for families.
It does so many different things for a really good price point.