Rumour: The PS3-mote?

The Playstation 3’s SixAxis controller is widely regarded as a rushed failure attempt to cash in on Nintendo’s motion-based Wii remote.

Regardless, motion-based controls are too sweet of plum to back away from. Rumour has it that Sony is trying the motion thing again with a slightly less rushed project that resembles the Wii remote on a far closer scale than SixAxis.

According to Kombo.com, a secret focus group held a dark and scary meeting:

PlayStation Underground apparently held some sort of focus group earlier this year, wherein a group of PS3 owners were taken to secret staging grounds on one of Earth’s moons (the one that didn’t get eaten), wherein they were shown a 12-inch tripod, and 4 PS3-styled remotes, sans the need for a nunchuk attachment.

Up to 4 of these are said to be able to be connected to the console at one time, and a demonstrator showed what they were capable of, and some mini-games to play. These ranged from tennis to fencing, and a “really really cool” paintball game. The demonstrator even used the “PS3mote” to play Quake on his laptop.

(…)

But [the] biggest concern was that the units required the aforementioned tripod, which plugged into the USB port; perhaps this version’s equivalent of the sensor bar on the Wii. In addition, the tripod needs to be set up in the middle of the gaming area, like a “batter standing above home plate.”

If this rumour be true, Sony has one cost-saving advantage: Nintendo’s already extensively tested and fine-tuned the Wii remote for safety. If Sony can skip the shattered television screen stage, it’ll be doing all right for itself.