You've probably seen that Sony has delayed the launch of its motion control wand - now apparently called 'Arc' - until autumn. The unit was originally intended for a spring debut.
The official explanation is reasonable: the company says it wants to ensure there is plenty of software available before the product comes to market. You'd think, however, that, considering games take at least 18 months to develop these days, Kaz Hirai and co. would have had a good idea about developer support when the spring date was announced last August and confirmed during the Tokyo Game Show at the end of September.
It was at TGS that Sony revealed it had 13 first-party launch titles in development, including such projects as 'Sing and Draw' and 'Motion Party', as well as new version of EyePet, Pain and Flower. Here too, we discovered that compatibility will be added to LittleBigPlanet and that Capcom has Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition on the way. Later, Little known Portuguese developer announced support within its forthcoming title Under Siege.
More recently, there has been little detailed chat about possible Arc titles. Of course the likes of EA, Sega and Ubisoft have all said they have dev kits and are working on projects, but as with Natal, there's little real information. So yes, spring always looked a little ambitious.
So now we have Arc going straight up against Natal - two quite different philosophies about the future of game control virtually head-to-head. And who's to say Nintendo won't just blow the whole thing wide open with Wii 2?
