Microsoft Cooking Up an Enhanced Xbox 360 Controller?

I should not have been talking about this until next year, but a story of a motion sensing add-on for the Xbox 360 controller forced me to interrupt my holiday break. First, let me tell you that the image floating around with supposed prototypes of a motion sensing Xbox 360 controller is FAKE.

The image in question, which you can see below, was taken from a Gizmodo article that showed the many prototypes Gyration and Bridge Design pitched to Nintendo in 2001; prototypes that eventually gave birth to the Wii controller.

TeamXbox.com can confirm that Microsoft has been researching alternative input technologies for the last two years, including vision-based recognition such as the one used on Xbox Live Vision, as well as motion sensing technologies similar to those seen in the Microsoft Freestyle Pro and the PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS.

Particularly, Microsoft has looked at ways to improve the right analog stick input and you’ll hear more about those efforts soon.