Game makers offer new ways to play

June 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Video-game makers are about to try to convince you that fancy 3-D screens, gesture-recognition cameras and ultra-sensitive motion controllers topped with brightly glowing spheres are what you need to have a good time.

They’ll do this as they try to emerge from a slump in the recession, which shocked a business long believed to be protected from, if not totally immune to, the workings of the broader economy.

Much of the industry’s success this year is riding on whether Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and game publishers are able to sway consumers toward new, maybe even pricey ways to experience games — even as free or inexpensive options on Facebook, smart phones and the iPad compete for their attention.

Beginning today at E3, as the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles is called, game companies will show off several new mechanisms for playing games. Among them will be Move, which is Sony’s new motion controller for the PlayStation 3 and launches this fall, when it is expected to cost less than $100. A black remote with a color-changing ball on top, it builds on the success of the Nintendo Wii’s popular motion- control wand, but it promises more precision. A camera called PlayStation Eye recognizes the glowing orb and uses it to track the remote’s position in a 3-D space, further immersing players in the game.

Even so, Fidel Martinez may need a bit of convincing. The 19-year-old PlayStation 3 owner says he likes his button-filled video game controllers just fine, thank you. Walking out of New York’s Nintendo World store recently after buying a wallet, Martinez said he doesn’t think he’ll buy Move.

“It’s too weird,” said Martinez. “The times I’ve played [motion-controlled]06142010_A02_001 games has been strange. I’d rather use the old kind.”

Sony is betting he’ll change his mind. Richard Marks, senior researcher at the company and the brains behind Move, thinks the controller will appeal to gamers like Martinez, even if they snubbed the Wii’s gesturing wand as kids’ stuff.