Nintendo to Sony: Wii Did It First

Did Sony copy Nintendo's motion-sensing idea? Nintendo seems to think so.

Nintendo went a long time after announcing the Wii, then the Revolution, before it unveiled the console's motion-sensing controller. One of the reasons given for the delay was that Nintendo wanted to avoid letting other companies copy its technology. Now, after Sony's revelation that the PlayStation 3 will come with its own kind of motion-sensing technology, Nintendo is pointing out Sony's borrowing of its ideas.

"I'd love to dig up some old [Sony boss] Phil Harrison comments and say 'hang on a second - six months ago when we launched our controller you said one thing, and now why are you doing this?'" Nintendo's David Yarnton told MCV.

"I don't know what their decision making process is but I think if you look back, any innovation that has come in gameplay has come from us."

And it didn't end there. Yarnton suggested that Sony's decision to drop the rumble feature from the PlayStation 3 controller was the result of borrowing other technology in the past.

"Historically we're always developing new things. We know Sony have had a lot of issues with their rumble feature and they've had to withdraw it - because they didn't innovate, they copied. With Nintendo, I'm trying to think of anything we've copied... but I can't."

Sony was embroiled in a court battle with technology creator Immersion, which sued Sony over the rumble feature of the Dual Shock controllers. Microsoft was involved in a similar suit but it settled out of court, bagging a share of Immersion in the process.

Sony was contacted to comment on this story but representatives refused to comment.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games