IN AN INTERVIEW with Industry Gamer Sony has come out swinging its motion stick against Natal, which is Microsoft’s competeting technology.

Rob Dyer, SCEA senior vice president of publisher relations, did what he does best in an interview with the paper when he attempted to leave no one in any doubt about the capabilities of Arc, Sony’s motion sensitive controller system.

Dyer suggested that although Microsoft was more ‘out’ in terms of consumer awareness this was all PR bluff, and frankly he should know. "I’m actually really proud of the way we’ve handled the motion controller. From Sony’s perspective, rather than go out and do a whole PR barrage to give everybody the ‘happy, happy, joy, joy’ news, we’re going to show up and have a line-up of products to show people rather than having a lot of great statements to say, ‘This is what’s going to happen.’" Ouch.

And that is not all, barely drawing breath he added, "So whether it’s at GDC or DPS (Destination PlayStation), and definitely at E3, you’re going to see – and I’ve seen it from both first and third parties – some really awesome products to support this," he said. "And rather than us go there and pat ourselves on the back, and send out press releases talking about this, we’re going to be Missouri; it’s going to be ’show me.’ And that’s the deal."

Looks like someone has forgotten all he learned at PR school. All the above sounds like it should have been covered in the first term.

However, he did get to the nut of why Arc is so great, mentioning specifically that it will be easier to develop for, and thus will pave the way for a lot of games, which after all will be the liveblood of either firm’s motion gaming system.

"From a third-party perspective it’s easier to develop for, you can use the same code base that you currently use for PS3 or 360 or even the Wii in order to get a motion controller game out. You can’t do that with Natal. You have to have a completely separate code base and my feeling is that we’re going to have a lot more games, a lot more innovation – particularly with the camera and the precision – versus what you’ll have with Natal or the Wii. We can all sit around here and debate that… but the fact is I’m not having any trouble getting third-party support."

The firm has apparently done a lot of consumer research as it tries to work out whether the consumer wants it. He added, "Trust me, we’ve spent way too much money on way too many outside resources looking at this. It’s not, ‘Oh gee, Nintendo did this. What a great idea. We need a motion controller.’ It’s ‘Does our consumer want it? Does it make sense for the games? Can publishers maximize it and sell more games?’ Based upon our research, the answer is ‘Yes, a definitive resounding Yes."