Nintendo tells Sony: “Stop Copying Me!” … But who’s copying who?

It’s nothing new to hear about the rivalry between Nintendo and Sony after this years E3 expo since both have controllers that are sporting various forms of motion sensor technology. Today, Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton openly attacked Sony for stealing Nintendo’s ideas, past and present. Yarnton said “Historically we’re always developing new things. We know Sony have had a lot of issues with their rumble feature and they’ve had to withdraw it – because they didn’t innovate, they copied”; obviously referring to both the past legal drama involving rumble technology, and motion-sensing ideas in the PS3 controller which is allegedly copying Nintendo’s Wii controller. However, it is common knowledge that motion sensor technology has been around of quite some time now…

More information after the jump – and believe me, its worth it!

It’s nothing new to hear about the rivalry between Nintendo and Sony after this years E3 expo since both have controllers that are sporting various forms of motion sensor technology. Today, Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton openly attacked Sony for stealing Nintendo’s ideas, past and present. Yarnton said “Historically we’re always developing new things. We know Sony have had a lot of issues with their rumble feature and they’ve had to withdraw it – because they didn’t innovate, they copied”; obviously referring to both the past legal drama involving rumble technology, and motion-sensing ideas in the PS3 controller which is allegedly copying Nintendo’s Wii controller.

However, it is common knowledge that motion sensor technology has been around of quite some time now. For example, Microsoft’s Sidewinder Freestyle Pro 1.0 for the PC has been around for over a decade; and although we cannot find an exact date of when it was released (probably because the internet wasn’t used so much back then), it was developed for Windows 95/98, and so would have been fist released in the late 1990’s. But this wasn’t the only controller using motion sensor technology in the 1990’s.

Here’s a snippet of a gaming show that features a Playstation 1 controller called the “Tiltforce 2” made by Pelican accessories. This controller had motion sensor technology back in 1999! Sure, it wasn’t made by Sony, but how could they copy something that was already available on their original console?

Yarnton also said: “With Nintendo, I’m trying to think of anything we’ve copied… but I can’t”. I wonder if he’d think the same after seeing this video.