PlayStation Move ad rips Wii, Xbox 360's Natal

I've tried not to laugh, tried to maintain some semblance of journalistic dispassion, but screw it, these Kevin Butler PlayStation spots are hilarious. The latest plugs Sony's upcoming PlayStation Move motion control system with some pretty barbed razzing of Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's forthcoming controller-free Project Natal.

In it, Sony's new "It Only Does Everything" campaign front-man, played by Jerry Lambert (Everybody Loves Raymond, Malcolm in the Middle, That 70's Show) delivers a video-cast from the "future" to thank PlayStation 3 owners for making the PlayStation Move a success. You've got the controller and camera with microphone working together to give you total control over your gaming experience. [Butler waves the PlayStation Move wand left and right] ...but this way too [Butler delivers a haymaker].


On the Xbox 360:


[The PlayStation Move]'s also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters and platformers, or, well, anything that doesn't involve catching a big red ball.


If you're in the market for a PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii, you've probably noticed that they're hard to come by. One of those shops, GameStop, said in a recent earnings call with investors that those shortages are expected to continue.

"I am not exactly sure that I have a total answer, obviously, it is a question that we ask the platform holders," Bartel said in response to an investor question on why shortages continue to plague the market. "Consequently, I can tell you that we do anticipate that we will be in that situation for the PS3 for another couple of months, unfortunately, because we could sell a lot more hardware than what we have on both that and the Wii platform."

Bartel went on to tell investors that his company expects to have Wii in-stock sooner than the PS3, but it will still take some time.

"So we do anticipate that those shortages should have bade some time before the next couple of months," Bartel said. He said that "unprecedented demand" could be a leading cause and both Nintendo and Sony are "still scrambling to catch up from the December surge of hardware that occurred."

Nintendo's shortage woes have been going on since the Wii was released. For a while, the company got ahead of demand, but it still suffers from supply problems that, frankly, should have been taken care of by now. And according to the company, it's working hard on it.

"Even with healthy sales, we realize that there are missed opportunities had supply been able to keep up with demand," a company representative wrote in an e-mailed statement. "Wii hardware shortages, which affected approximately 70 percent of all retail locations during February, are being remedied. For a while, Sony couldn't get PlayStation 3 units to leave store shelves due to higher demand for the Wii and Xbox 360. PS3 sales have been so torrid that NPD reported earlier this month the console's sales in February were up 30 percent year over year.