What is PS3 Move?

PlayStation Move is a motion-sensing game controller platform for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game console by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). Based on a handheld motion controller wand, PlayStation Move uses the PlayStation Eye camera to track the wand's position, and inertial sensors in the wand to detect its motion. First revealed on June 2, 2009, PlayStation Move launched in mainland Europe and most Asian markets on 15 September 2010, in Australasia on 16 September 2010, in North America and the UK on 17 September 2010, in Japan on 21 October 2010. Hardware available at launch included the main PlayStation Move motion controller, a supplementary PlayStation Move navigation controller, and an optional PlayStation Move charging station. It competes with the Wii Remote/Wii MotionPlus and Kinect motion control systems for the Wii and Xbox 360 home consoles, respectively.

Although PlayStation Move is implemented on the existing PlayStation 3 console, Sony stated that it treated Move's debut as its own major "platform launch", with an aggressive marketing campaign to support it. The tagline for PlayStation Move from E3 2010 was "This Changes Everything", including partnerships with Coca-Cola, as part of the "It Only Does Everything" marketing campaign which debuted with the redesigned "Slim" PlayStation 3.

Technology

The PlayStation Move motion controller features an orb at the head which can glow in any of a full range of colors using RGB light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Based on the colors in the user environment captured by the PlayStation Eye camera, the system dynamically selects an orb color that can be distinguished from the rest of the scene. The colored light serves as an active marker, the position of which can be tracked along the image plane by the PlayStation Eye. The uniform spherical shape and known size of the light also allows the system to simply determine the controller's distance from the PlayStation Eye through the light's image size, thus enabling the controller's position to be tracked in three dimensions with high precision and accuracy. The sphere-based distance calculation allows the controller to operate with minimal processing latency, as opposed to other camera-based control techniques on the PlayStation 3.

A pair of inertial sensors inside the controller, a three-axis linear accelerometer and a three-axis angular rate sensor, are used to track rotation as well as overall motion. An internal magnetometer is also used for calibrating the controller's orientation against the Earth's magnetic field to help correct against cumulative error (drift) by the inertial sensors. The inertial sensors can be used for dead reckoning in cases which the camera tracking is insufficient, such as when the controller is obscured behind the player's back.