Not to be outdone by Microsoft’s Project Natal, Sony were also demoing motion control at E3 this year. The Sony offering doesn’t have a name yet but to me “wand” seems like the most appropriate description.

Sony have taken a different tack to MS – rather than have the camera interpret a whole body movement, Sony’s technology uses a physical controller (the aforementioned wand) and a camera to track it. The wand has motion sensors and buttons on it – so far, so Nintendo although it’s tracked with far more accuracy than the Wii manages.

The “gasp” moment in the demo (really, listen out for it) came when they showed the wand magically transforming into a variety of bats and weapons in the players hand.

This is a mashup of virtual and physical worlds better than anything you’ve seen outside of Hollywood and gives a glimpse of what we should be looking forward to in a couple of years.

Also demonstrated was the ability to use two of the wands together to form a bow and arrow – cool stuff indeed. The tracking accuracy looks excellent and the fact that this is a live tech demo rather than a scripted video shows how much faith Sony have in the technology.

With this and Natal around the corner, gaming is about to enter a whole new era – we can’t wait!