New Playstation Move Info

This blogger made his way down to the Engadget Show today in New York City. There was a lot of interesting things talked about, but mostly non-gaming related. However, today's show also featured a demo of the Playstation Move. And not only did I get to see the Move up close and personal (though no hands-on, sadly), but the guys from Sony showed off some features that have not yet been shown, including something in particular that was "rough because [they] coded it last night."

Many of the things shown off were things that we've seen either at last E3 or at GDC. But there were two things that were never-before-seen. The first was a feature of the Move that is incredibly interesting. The first was dubbed in the tech demo's menu as "multitouch." Essentially, it had the Eye reading two separate Moves (something we already knew was possible) for creating things. All of the creations were basic, flat things, but it was interesting. The guys from Engadget were, at first, making simple floating, translucent panes in the air, but eventually they were shown how to make different objects. Then, a simple room with a table was pulled up, and they created what is almost like an office desk. He pulled up a video feed of what the Playstation Eye was seeing and put that up like a monitor, and then another that showed the Engadget homepage. After that he pulled up a map and laid it flat on the table. And of course, what desk would be complete without a picture of Jack Tretton?

What happened next was the interesting part. Using one of the buttons on the Move, the player could switch to camera mode. Moving the controller around controlled the camera, and moving it toward and away from the screen would move back and forward into the space. The live video feed continued running and the player could look down at the table to analyze the map. It's a really interesting concept that could mean some new great uses. Specifically mentioned at the show was RTS games, which could see a revival on consoles with this kind of control method. Think R.U.S.E., but controlled on a virtual touchscreen table as opposed to the actual $20,000 Microsoft Surface. There's a video of this part of the show below.

The second new feature was really just for fun. Remember the dominoes game that was showed off at E3 last summer? Well, within that is what was being called the "Snake game." Pushing a particular button on the Moves (this is for two players) would turn the dominoes into two snakes made of dominoes. However, pressing another button would turn them into real snakes (though they were skeleton snakes in this tech demo). Then the two players would try suing the move to control the snake's head and bite off the other snake's head. A simple, though really amusing, game and a really cool idea that also succeeded in showing off the way's the Eye and the Move can track all kinds of motion.

That's all the new info that there is to give today, but PAX East is just around the corner and Sony will certainly have at least one trick up their sleeves to wow attendees.