At Fudzilla we can't mince words, we might mangle them, but the mincer does not touch them. We noted over at Joystiq that there was a picture of a Sony executive waiving a sex aid and we thought "strange new product line" for Sony to get into.

Normally such gear is of limited interest to Fudzilla readers because it is a bit consumer and gadgety. This one also didn't show much in the way of innovation either. It was a stick with a ball on the top, the sort of thing which has bought joy to lonely women, or couples interested in experimenting in stuff other than baking interestingly shaped biscuits.

Reading the story we discovered that the “sphere” is coloured glows in the dark. Which we would have thought had some novelty value but was hardly original. However it turned out that the “sex aid” was nothing of the sort. In fact the Sony executive was proudly displaying the outfit's latest motion controller which is supposed to bring the PS3 up to speed with the Nintendo Wii.

Microsoft's "Project Natal" is a similar effort while the Sony creation is called the Sphere. Sphere is the name that the developers came up with, presumably because they thought their mum's bedside cabinets were packed full of similarly-shaped “massage devices” which they did not know what they did. In fact many executives at Sony were not familiar with the name meaning it may be strictly a development codename for now.

Sphere or not, Sony might want to rethink the shape. It may be thinking that if the Nintendo Wii can boldly enter the world of Water Sports with its name, then maybe it can enter another area of the adult entertainment industry.