On December 3, a patent for an "Expandable Control Device Via Hardware Attachment" surfaced on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site.
Yep, it's Sony's.
Kotaku dug up the patent, and now gamers are pouring over the pictures and descriptions.
The most intriguing bit: "The attachment can be coupled and decoupled to the connector and allows the gaming system to visually track the location of the handle via the visual interface. In another embodiment, the attachment provides additional communication capabilities"
Motion sensing capabilities, of course, are a new and necessary part of the meta-game of the game industry.
Next year, everyone will be talking about Project Natal, Microsoft's game-changing motion-sensing cam, and Sony has got to compete.
The real differentiation will not be the peripheral, but the games.
What will the motion-sensing equivalent of Pong be?
David Kushner is the author of many books, including Masters of Doom, Jonny Magic & the Card Shark Kids, Levittown, The Bones of Marianna, and Alligator Candy. A contributing editor of Rolling Stone, he has written for publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine.
