Sony delays rival to Nintendo's Wii

Sony has delayed the launch of its motion-sensitive rival to Nintendo's highly successful Wii games console by six months and it will not now hit the shops until the autumn.

The delay means that the Japanese gaming giant now has only a slim timing advantage over Microsoft, which is due to launch its revolutionary hands-free ­gaming interface – codenamed Project Natal – for the Xbox 360 in time for Christmas.

But it does mean that by the festive season, video gamers will have the choice of three different devices, all of which will use motion-sensitive control, giving players a far more interactive experience.

The news is an obvious setback for Sony, which was plagued by delays when it launched the PlayStation 3 three years ago. It also comes after the company last week admitted that the launch of hotly anticipated racing game Gran Turismo 5 has had to be delayed yet again. It has been more than five years since the last instalment of the popular franchise.

But the company stressed that the decision to delay the launch of its new controller was not linked to any particular hardware or design fault. Instead the company wants to ensure that there are enough games available that can use the new controller before launching it on the market.

The success of the Nintendo Wii, launched in 2006, has revolutionised the games market. Allowing players to ditch their joysticks and traditional button-heavy controllers in favour of a wand they can wave at their TV screens has helped widen the appeal of video games, taking consoles out of the teenage bedrooms and back into the living room.

Sony unveiled its answer to the Wii, a motion-sensitive controller for the Playstation 3, at the E3 electronics show in Los Angeles last summer. It uses a television-top camera to track a wireless controller held by the player. Sony claims it can track actions with "sub-millimeter accuracy".

Microsoft's Project Natal, however, is more ambitious and does not require players to hold a controller at all। Microsoft maintains it can track a player's movements in three dimensions. It can also recognise faces and react to voice prompts, greatly expanding the range of actions which software developers can use in their games.