Green Room designs help Playstation get on the Move
Retail design agency Green Room has been helping Sony show off its motion sensing Playstation Move controller to videogame fans.
The Birmingham-based agency was awarded the contract to design, engineer and roll out a series of sampling furniture and demonstration units following a competitive tender process during the spring of 2010.
Green Room's design (pictured) allows gamers to get a feel for the way the wireless Move controller replicates their real-life physical actions on screen.
The furniture is now being used in stores and has already been seen at major games events such as the E3 Expo in Los Angeles and the Interactive Digital Entertainment Festival in Cannes.
Richard Ash, Green Room's chief executive, said: "Wireless gaming is an interactive and physical experience, yet the sampling furniture used to facilitate trial in-store and at public events was essentially still the same as those developed for fixed-wire controllers back in the day. The front-fixing tethering used previously essentially made the wireless controller wired again, placing many physical and emotive restrictions on the user and failing to give an authentic experience.
“Tethering is a inevitable necessity in most retail or event situations, but for a platform as immersive as PlayStation Move, these primitive restrictions were clearly unacceptable. So our team set to and reinvented the format, engineering a solution that places the tether to the rear of the gamer, permitting complete freedom of movement and natural play.
"It may sound an obvious and simple solution, but in the retail environment, there are a wide variety of practical and logistical obstacles to overcome for it to be a success - and we have steered through this maze of compromises to make it possible.”
Green Room has also developed a portable unit that includes a screen, Playstation 3 console and Move controllers which sales reps can transport by car.