Nintendo Accuses Sony Of Stealing Ideas

Mike Howes 20 May, 2006 at 2:48am ET Article published in Tech

Nintendo is accusing Sony outright of stealing the idea for their motion-sensing controller.
While they haven’t brought it as far as a lawsuit(which is unlikely to happen), they do have a good point in that Sony dropped their originally controller design mid-development to push the new one.

GameDailyBiz quoted Nintendo UK’s David Yarnton as saying. “I don’t know what their decision-making process is, but I think if you look back, any innovation that has come in game play has come from us.”

Source: TechSpot

Comments

20 May 2006 ~ 3:09am Thrax They. Both. Stole. It. From. Logitech.
20 May 2006 ~ 3:18am Garg

Thrax wrote:

They. Both. Stole. It. From. Logitech.

Yup.

But Nintendo's whining would be ludicrous even if Sony did steal "original" ideas from them. Every generation, the hardware makers incorporate whatever worked from the previous generation, whoever made it the last time around. The only difference this time is that Sony isn't waiting to see if it'll work for Nintendo. Considering the amount of hype that Nintendo has put into their gimmick, it's almost clever. Too bad it'll probably backfire.

If anything, it has distracted from the sales pitch Sony has been preparing for the PS3 with something that looks a lot more gimmicky with a Sony badge on it than it did with a Nintendo one.
21 May 2006 ~ 2:18am EMT

Thrax wrote:

They. Both. Stole. It. From. Logitech.

What Sony stole is perhaps the concept of a whole console with motion sensing functionality out of the box; or, depending how important it is in PS3, the idea of a motion sensing game franchise. Logitech's mere accessory controller may have "stolen" from robotics, or even Microsoft... probably not the point.
21 May 2006 ~ 9:14am Medlock

Gargoyle wrote:

Considering the amount of hype that Nintendo has put into their gimmick, it's almost clever. Too bad it'll probably backfire.

I think you're underestimating Nintendo's fans. Most of them have the utmost faith in Nintendo. If this generation is it's downfall I'll eat my graphics card...while the computer is on!
21 May 2006 ~ 12:54pm Garg I think I phrased that badly. I meant that Sony's use of the motion sensing technology was a clever tactic to deflate Nintendo's hype, but it will probably backfire on Sony.

And I wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating Nintendo's fans. They're not as nuts as the Apple cultists, but they're up there