Sony’s Latest Patent; A Sign of Desperation?
While some of us were under the impression that Sony’s entry into the motion control market involved a syphilitic Wii-mote rip off, apparently we were wrong. Yes, despite the E3 tech demo of a wand that featured one to one motion tracking, Sony, according to an engadget article have applied for a new patent that utilizes their Playstation Eye with object motion-detection as well as capture.
The patent itself describes everyday object motion detection combined with the objects being stored in memory. While engadget cleverly asks for video of the first, of what likely will be many videos, of consumers crashing their HDTVs with actual baseball bats, there are other issues here. Despite having a great software lineup and a brand new iteration of their handheld system, Sony are just coming off as desperate. One would think that with what they are prepared to bring to the market in the upcoming months that they would be content to stay on track with their focus on a hardcore gaming message.
Microsoft’s well received E3 press conference was notable for its tech demo of Project Natal. Yes it involved a variation of motion control that Nintendo’s Wii has revolutionized the market with, but it also represented an innovative and creative step forward. In theory Natal utilizes a camera integrated with other tech alongside new software that incorporates speech and motion recognition. So, during E3 Sony looked like a Nintendo wannabe with their wand, and now they look like a Microsoft wannabe with their camera-facilitated object motion capture.
When the epitaph is written on this generation of consoles, one aspect that should command at least a chapter if not a volume, is Sony’s inability to manage their corporate message. From the outset they have been trailing Microsoft in the hardcore community and Nintendo’s Wii has waggled away their dominance over the console gaming market. They started off this generation with a ridiculously overpriced and over engineered console. They forced us all to sit through a bunch of bullshit about rumble and controllers being irrelevant despite a very public dispute over copyright and force-feedback technology. And now that they seem to have righted the ship around focussing on quality software and supporting a great console, they are spinning their wheels with object motion capture that is just going to bust a whole bunch of expensive TVs into little bits.
I’d have to disagree with you that Microsoft’s Natal demo was better (or worse for that matter) than Sony’s, until both companies have their final retail models on show for all to see all we can do is speculate based on personal preference as to who will come out on top.
Please correct the title. “Sony’s Latest Copyright” is wrong. Your article is about a patent matter and has nothing to do with copyright.
Patents (which protect technical inventions) and copyright (which protects things like artistic or literary works) are not the same thing. Copyright happens the moment the work is created, while patent applications are applied for at a patent office. Patent applications are examined, and if they meet the criteria (e.g. that they are new and not just obvious modifications of what has been done before), they are granted. Both ungranted patent applications and granted patents are published.
Is your article about a granted patent or about a patent application?
Your article also makes the assumption that all patent applications that are filed make their way into products. I thought blog sites had collectively realised that that was a poor assumption to make years ago.
Sony has been working on EyeToy stuff for way longer than any of the other two companies. Of course after Microsoft announcing Natal, everything camera related is a simple ripoff. Also because Sony is in third place, everything they do is desperate.
People need to stop being stupid and think about the stuff they write. Especially if they still think, that Natal does speech recognition.
@Simon: Good call with the Patent/Copyright thing, I shall update the article to better reflect it. It’s my bad for not spotting it before the article went live.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that the patent was applied for last year, waaaaay before the e3 unveiling of natal.
It bugged me for almost 5 minutes that I didn’t actually have any proof to back that up, but couldn’t find the link to the actual patent application so gave up. Just as well this is the internetz and proof isn’t necessary for anything, ever!
Oh wait, no, here it is: Patent link
After much digging (and ian_tweed telling me via twitter) the patent is here.
Or here, having just noticed I didn’t actually link to it. Providing proof to my claims on the internetz? PREPOSTEROUS!
@someguy:
Thanks for the clarification. Wardrox is going to beat me now, but I guess I deserve it.
*bends over*
Sweet, hooray for horrible, brutal and potential disturbing beatings!
Does this comment system hate non-registered users, or is it just slow? I’d sign up, but the more people that sign up, the better numbers ol’ droxxy has, and I just can’t force myself to assist his horrible lack of the journalisms.
@someguy: If you’re not registered, the spam filter assumed you’re plotting evil things, hence the delay caused by me having to manually approve your previous few posts (as they had hyperlinks in).