Only a few years ago Nintendo revolutionised gaming with the Wii. It’s Wii-mote infrared controller got gamers off the couch and introduced thousands of people to a new form of gameplay. But it soon looks set to be outdated as the summer’s big game shows, E3 and GamesCom, have shown technological control advancements from both Sony and Microsoft.

Determined not to be outdone by the Japanese gaming giant, the manufacturers of the Xbox 360 (X360) and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) have been working hard to revolutionise how we play games – again. Unveiled at the shows, even more exciting news is that these new ‘controllers’ will be available for our homes as early as spring 2010.

Imagine a handheld controller hundreds of times more precise than the Wii-mote – this is what Sony is saying its technology, codenamed PlayStation Motion Control, is capable of.

Similar to the Wii-mote, in that it is a baton-like controller with buttons, Sony’s device works with the PlayStation Eye, focusing on the same kind of gameplay experiences as the Wii, but with more precision.

Research Sony undertook showed that while gamers liked the physical gameplay its PlayStation Eye camera offered, they missed the precision and buttons of a controller, so the developers chose to focus on a wand-type controller that merged the two.

‘We believe the path we have chosen is an ideal combination of both spatial and action/button input, and of course we can combine that with voice and video data from the PlayStation Eye mic array and camera,’ Dr Richard Marks, who works in Sony’s research and development (R&D) department recently told PC World.

Using the PlayStation Eye to calibrate your movements, the technology puts you into the game, and will place on screen, any object into your hand, from a tennis bat to a gun. The ‘Eye can track your skeletal movements instantly in a 3D environment: you can move up and down, back and forth and it will move on-screen accordingly.  It will even recognise your face and is so precise that it can recognise separate finger movements.

With ‘true 3D pointing’ available, the E3 demo showed how first person shooters (FPS) would also work well with the controller, as you duck and weave around the room, using it as a gun with a button acting as trigger.

But the most interesting thing is that you can write. This may not sound like anything special, however writing requires extreme precision and the controller is tracked with sub-millimetre accuracy. Writing on its own doesn’t sound like exciting gameplay, however this ability is a basic tool that will allow many more highly detailed capabilities within a game environment.

Taking things a step further, Microsoft’s technology, codenamed Project Natal, aims to take the controller totally out of the gaming equation!

Games that use this technology won’t need a conventional controller. Sitting below your TV, it’s built up of a camera with infrared sensor, a multi array mic and Microsoft’s own voice recognition technology all running on a custom processor. The developers say it’ll be able to track and interpret motion data for up to four people simultaneously, and turns your entire body into a controller.

’Every part of your body is in play,’ says Kudo Tsunoda, creative director of Project Natal. ‘I can use my hands, my legs.’

It works using body heat and tracking as well as face and voice recognition. The infrared camera calibrates itself to the room’s temperature and then can recognise shapes of heat as bodies. Saving the shape of your body and your face, it will recognise you in the future, and load your profile as you appear in front of it. It also tracks 48 points on your body including elbows and knees, to create a wire-frame that it will map onto your onscreen avatar.

While tracking your body’s movements in 3D, it will also understand voice commands, even recognising a shift of emotion in your voice.

This was showed in a demo of Milo and Kate, a game being developed by UK studio Lionhead, which is run by gaming guru Peter Molyneux.

Showcased at E3, you can interact with in-game character Milo in many ways, including telling jokes. He can recognise humour by the tone of your voice and respond accordingly. He already has an amazing vocabulary for you to interact with him, and even uses the camera to recognise what you’re wearing, so can tell you that your ‘red t-shirt suits you’. You can even draw things on paper, hold them up to the camera and Milo will take it from the top of the screen and look at your picture in-game. Pretty damn impressive.

But as well as having a use in games themselves, Natal also has a role as a simple way to navigate through Xbox menus. With Twitter and Facebook coming soon, in addition to the multimedia features the X360 has, Microsoft wanted non-gamers to find it easy to use the console to play movies and listen to music etc.

‘We have a lot of different content out there that appeals to a lot of different people, and so it becomes very important that we develop a new control system that anybody can use,’ says Tsunoda.

So what does all this technology actually mean for gaming – is it a fad or will it change the face of gaming as we know it?

Here at Flipside, we believe that both these technologies are going to find a place in the gaming world, offering a new experience and a new way to play games. But don’t expect controllers as we know them to disappear – these technologies are set to add to our current gaming experiences, not replace them.

Abilities the systems offer will allow new gameplay features as well as improving existing ones.

For example, Sony’s technology will revolutionise real time strategy (RTS) games on consoles. To date they’ve never transferred over from the PC to console very successfully, as they’ve required the precision of a mouse. However, as we described early with the ability to write, this detail will now allow you to select troops by simply circling them, and then drawing them a route with the controller.

Then there’s the physical side of gaming. Both systems look set to offer more kinds of physical gameplay – for example Sony’s technology can allow you to become an archer, firing arrows, or even duck and weave as you throw weapons at foes.

Microsoft’s on the other hand allows you to become the controller, which offers further physical activity. In a Ricochet game demo, you have you use your arms and legs to hit and bat balls that fly towards you. Tiring perhaps, but a good workout.

It’s still early days for both technologies, however as game designers get to grips with them, they’ll begin to build entirely different games full of innovative experiences.

As Peter Molyneux says: ‘What designers, and what this industry does with Natal, will change the landscapes of games that we play.’

‘We’re just at the very beginning of full body controls,’ adds Jesse Schell, assistant professor of entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon University, and ceo of Schell Games. “Imagine controlling a game just with subtle motions of your fingertips, or even using your eyebrows and facial gestures.’

The accessibility of these systems means they are also likely to find uses outside of gaming, including healthcare.

‘Hopefully it will help create some innovative games like we haven't seen before. It should help create more intuitive and engaging experiences, and we should also see some development in terms of therapeutic games for surgery recovery, and also for dealing with stress as well,’ says Drew Davidson, director of the Entertainment Technology Centre (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon.

‘Embodied interactivity could help create some immersive experiences across a variety of fields,’ he concludes.