Nintendo shows 'Revolutionary' console controller

Games console developers devote as much time to the launching of the controllers their machines will be played with as the game-hosting hardware itself. The latest company to do so is Nintendo. Today it told the world what the gamepad that will ship with its Revolution console will look like.

Frankly, it's ugly and looks more like something you'd use to adjust the height of a dentist's chair, but it does at least have some interesting internals.

One of which is motion detection, so we can expect to see players gesturing grandiosely at their TV screens in a bid to make Mario jump over rocks and hazards.

The look, incidentally, is derived from TV remote controls. Since ordinary consumers are more familiar with them than they are with traditional console controllers, non-gamers will find Revolution easier to use, Nintendo reckons.

Revolution is due to ship next year, and is likely to target non-gamers as much as folk who have grown up playing a variety of consoles. Nintendo executives have consistently touted a return to more basic games that win fans through clever gameplay rather than expensive-to-create imagery. As such, it's moving away from Sony and Microsoft whose PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are likely to be pitched heavily toward hard-core gamers.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata also said today he hopes to help smaller developers break into the console software arena, something many of them have found too expensive to achieve in the past. "Small developers can compete on creativity not on scale or staff size," he said. "Nintendo is willing to help bring these ideas to life." ®