Nintendo Produces New Remote Control

TOKYO - Nintendo Co. unveiled the controller for its next-generation Revolution console at the Tokyo Game Show on Friday — and it looks less like a gamepad than a television remote.

The slender wireless wand, held in one hand, senses its position in three-dimensional space, letting players swing it like a tennis racket, aim it like a gun, slash it like a sword or cast it like a fishing rod.

"We want to break the barrier between people who play games and people who do not," Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said in a keynote address. "Complex controllers scare away new players. Anyone knows how to point."

The design is a gamble. Sony and Microsoft are racing toward ever more powerful machines — Microsoft's Xbox 360 arrives Nov. 22 — while Nintendo is betting that simpler, more intuitive play will matter more than raw graphics.

In a demonstration video shown to a packed hall in Chiba, outside Tokyo, players swung the wand to conduct an orchestra, fillet a virtual fish and swat flies on a picnic table. No live demo of a full game was offered.

An attachment docked to the wand adds a small analog stick for movement, Nintendo said, and the console can sense the controller's distance from a sensor bar near the screen, enabling depth as well as direction.

Game developers greeted the concept with curiosity and caution. "It is either revolutionary — the name fits — or a very strange bet," said one visiting executive. "With Nintendo, both have been true before."

The Revolution is due next year. Nintendo, which has watched its GameCube finish a distant third to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, says the console will also play a back catalog of classic Nintendo games downloaded online.