Nintendo shows off new videogame controller

NINTENDO stole Microsoft’s thunder yesterday when they unveiled their new, user-friendly videogame controller that looks like a TV remote control and can be waved like a wand or a baseball bat.

Nintendo showed off the controller at the Tokyo Game Show, which opened yesterday and is turning into a showcase for the intensifying three-way battle among Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo Co Ltd in next-generation videogame consoles.

“We thought about how everyone in the family uses the TV remote, but some people don’t want to even touch the game controller,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said. “We want to set a new interface standard for games.”

The Kyoto-based company, famous for the Game Boy Advance handheld as well as Super Mario and Pokemon games, has been introducing simpler-to-play games like the Nintendogs virtual - pet game for its Nintendo DS - a portable game machine with two screens, including a touch panel.

Microsoft is also aggressively pushing its next-generation Xbox 360 at the show, determined not to repeat the dismal failure of its original Xbox console in Japan - home to some of the most devoted game fans in the world and a market dominated by Sony’s PlayStation.

Washington-based Microsoft has sold 21.9 million Xbox machines globally since the Xbox went on sale three years ago, but only about 1.8m of that number were sold in Asia including Japan.

For most Japanese, the home console of choice is still Sony. The Japanese electronics and entertainment company has sold 91 million PlayStation 2 consoles worldwide over the last five years, 21 million of them in Asia. More than a 100 million of the original PlayStations have been sold worldwide.

PlayStation 3, which will go on sale next year, will be powered by a new computer chip called “cell” that Sony says will also drive digital electronics products in the works.

PlayStation 3 will also use the next generation video format called Blu-ray Disk.

The Xbox may chip away at Sony but Nintendo, with its brand appeal and ability to offer innovative products, will continue to hold its own and maintain its profits against the larger rivals, experts believe.

Xbox 360 is scheduled to start selling on November 22 in North America, December 2 in Europe and December 10 in Japan - beating the still unpriced PlayStation 3 to the stores.

To appeal to Japanese game fans, Microsoft has made more of a point this time of signing on designers popular here to make games exclusive for Xbox 360, such as Final Fantasy XI.

Ninety-Nine Nights, promised for January, allows players to control an acrobatic warrior that jumps and twirls while slashing hundreds of knights or “kills” with a sweep of a sword, accumulating points and rising to higher levels of virtual superpower.

Yoshihiro Maruyama, who oversees the Xbox business in Japan, said: “I just don’t think there’s any brand loyalty in the videogame business.”