The Sony Playstation Move is finally here and promises to usher in a new era of high definition precision to casual and hardcore gamers alike.

Our Playstation Move Demo kit arrived this week, and after we were done ogling the very pretty box that it arrived in, we decided to break out the goods and find out what we were in for.

We have taken care of a virtual pet, we have played many strange sports, we have ridden an office chair down a hill, and we have done our best to not break everything in the gaming room to bring you this definite Playstation Move review.

My arm really hurts, review after the jump.

The toys

Upon opening the demo box, we were greeted with a Playstation Move controller and the PS-Eye camera.

The setup is pretty simple. You plug the camera into an available USB slot on the Playstation 3 and then mount it either on top of, or in front of, your television (I had to move this other flat sensor bar thingy to make space for it first). Once the camera was set up, I plugged the Move controller into the PS3 using a mini-to-normal USB cable to synchronise it with the Playstation, and I was pretty much done.

Do however, be prepared to calibrate the Move controller multiple times over multiple games as some of them have different methods, and most require you to do it before every gaming session.

The Move controller itself has a really snug feel in your hand and its overall quality feels extremely solid. The controller has a large “Move” button in the center of it and it is surrounded by the four trademark Playstation face buttons (╳, â–µ, â—», O), although instead of their usual layout of bottom, top, left and right (respectively) they are in a square formation as seen in the images.

The left and right sides of the controller have the select and start buttons, which sit almost flush with controller itself and do a good job of being practically unnoticeable to your hand while you use the controller. The back of the controller then has the very important trigger, one that you are going to wish was built into the PS3 controller, as it has good range and nice soft feel to it when pressed.

On the tip of the controller, you will notice that there is a big ball, often referred to as the “ping pong” ball, when in fact, it feels more like a really soft squash ball more than anything. Besides also being able to change color, the ball is used to track your motions, and thanks to its soft rubbery feel, doubles quite nicely as a safety measure should the controller go flying (always wear your wrist-strap kids).

As for one last mention, I would have liked the controller to have a d-pad or even a small analogue stick on it. It doesn’t stand out as a big problem to not have one, but it could be Nintendo’s fault for making me expect to have some sort of basic navigation tool available without having to use another hand.

The PS-Eye has the option to be set to a normal and a widescreen mode (the widescreen mode is used for pretty much all gaming purposes). The modes are changed by rotating the lens either left or right, and let you know when they are in place with a “click”. While the camera is sturdy overall, the lens component itself is very flimsy and rattle-ey and feels like it doesn’t match up to the same quality as the rest of the bundle. The base is mostly made up of a lightly grippy rubber, but I didn’t feel comfortable with it sitting on the television by itself at all and had to resort to some good ol’ Prestik to make sure that it didn’t go toppling over for no good reason.

When gaming doesn’t apply

The Playstation XMB cross media bar can now be controlled with the use of the Move controller. The buttons on the controller are always active, but in order to avoid crazy mix-ups, the motion control is activated by holding down the trigger. Once the trigger is down, the XMB can be navigated by pointing the controller at the screen and simply motioning left, right, up or down to get to where you want to go.

Rather than go for a “pointer” interface, Sony have kept it simple by still restricting the movements to the usual horizontal and vertical way that the XMB works and the good news is that it works solidly and avoids you having to carefully aim at an icon just to get to where you want to go.