Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton has pulled no punches when it comes to his opinion on Sony's PS3 controller. Yarnton believes that Sony have not only copied the motion sensing idea from Nintendo but he also claims that Sony have copied other ideas in the past.

“I’d love to dig up some old Phil Harrison comments and say ‘hang on a second – six months ago when we launched our controller you said one thing, and now why are you doing this?’”, he said." I don’t know what their decision making process is but I think if you look back, any innovation that has come in gameplay has come from us.”

“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. With Nintendo, I’m trying to think of anything we’ve copied... but I can’t.”

The two controllers do differ in many ways. The PS3 controller has a 'tilt' ability whereas the Wii controller has full motion sensing technology. This means that games such as Wii Tennis and Zelda would not play in the same way on both controllers. The PS3's controller functions will be more suited to racing or flight games (Sony showed the controller working on a demo of Warhawk), whereas the Wii controller will also allow for swing control by tracking the user's hand motions and will ensure that you'll need to use your body to control any on screen movements. On the PS3, you'll still primarily be using your thumbs to control activity.

According to this patent, it appears that Sony had patented the idea long before Nintendo?

Looks like Nintendo won't be too keen to be 'friends' with Sony after all, despite their comments that they believe Wii is the second best of the next-gen consoles. Source: Cubed 3