Welcome to 30 Ridiculous Retro Rumors, a brand new series that will run daily between November 26 and December 25, 2015. This is a series where we debunk some of the craziest rumors and predictions of all time. Today we're talking about the rush to compete with the Wii. As Nintendo dominated the 2007 holiday season, Electronic Gaming Monthly wondered if Sony might rip off the Wii's motion controller. But they were only half right, as you will see in this episode of 30 Ridiculous Retro Rumors.


This is a real rumor taken directly from the August 2007 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly ...

When Nintendo announced the Wii, games journalists snickered at the name and predicted it would come in a distant third to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. But by 2007, it was painfully clear that this was not the trajectory. Nintendo dominated the charts, moving more than seven million units in just the United States. This left Sony and Microsoft scrambling to catch up.

The secret to Nintendo's success can be linked back to the simple Wii remote and inexpensive price point. These two factors helped bring in a new audience filled with casual gamers who loved Wii Sports and, well, that's pretty much it. But even if grandma didn't buy a lot of games, there was clearly pressure on the other companies to come up with some sort of motion control alternative. This sent magazine editors into a frenzy predicting Wii remote-style controllers for the competing consoles.

But leave it to Quartermann to take this idea to a baffling place. Instead of predicting a waggle wand for the PS3, he suggests Sony is going to repackage the PlayStation 2 with a brand new motion controller. Not only did this not happen, but it doesn't even make sense. Forget the Wii remote, Sony dabbled in motion controls years before Nintendo released their curiously-named console. While not a huge hit in America, the EyeToy predated the Wii by three years and hinted at what Microsoft would eventually do with Kinect.

Sony would eventually release a controller that was curiously similar to the Wii remote, but it never found its way to the PlayStation 2. Perhaps that's for the best.