BERLIN Tucked among the tablets, cameras, laptops and other gear at Sony's massive display here at the IFA show was a little bit of magic — courtesy of Harry Potter author JK Rowling and the PlayStation 3.
The newest in Sony's Wonderbook series of augmented reality games, "Book of Spells" uses a PlayStation 3 game console, the PlayStation Eye camera and the Wii-like PlayStation Move handhold controller to create some onscreen magic. The book itself is just a series of white pages with big line and dot symbols. But when the camera sees them, it reads the symbols to trigger a game in which you appear on the TV screen in a magician's lair with a beautifully illustrated book.
The camera also tracks your movements of the handheld controller (which features a light on top), showing it onscreen as a powerful magic wand. Turning pages of the book in front of you brings up new wand-driven spells, such as making a pumpkin expand bigger and bigger until it pops and splatters on the screen.
Sony didn't give us too many specifics of the game, but Simone, who demonstrated it for us said it will probably cost as much as other PlayStation 3 games (typically around $60) and that it will "definitely" be out in time for Christmas.