In a twist, Sony said Wednesday that it will make a version of its Sony PlayStation Move software available to researchers, hobbyists and universities, to develop their own motion-aware applications for the PC.

In a twist, Sony said Wednesday that it will make a version of its Sony PlayStation Move software available to researchers, hobbyists and universities, to develop their own motion-aware applications for the PC.

At the Game Developers' Conference, Sony launched Move.Me, a software app that uses the as input. It will be available for download this spring, and a "handful" of researchers have already expressed interest, Sony said.

Unlike the , the Move uses both Sony's Eye camera as well as the Move handheld wand, which assists the Eye in tracking the Move's motion. In a twist, Sony said nothing about developing apps for the PlayStation 3, but instead for the Windows or Linux itself. However, Sony also said that other devices, such as tablets and smartphones, can also receive PlayStation Move's tracking data if they can connect to a PS3 system.

"PlayStation Move's camera-plus-controller combination allows for the most precise and immersive gaming experiences," said John McCutchan, senior engineer, SCEA Developer Support, in a statement. "Now we're formally taking that advanced technology, which was almost ten years in the making, and offering it to innovators outside of our traditional game development community so they can create their own applications to impact the world in exciting new ways."

Sony said that examples could include medical research or game development that take advantage of the Move's motion-sensing capabilities.

SCEA will support the Move.Me application with sample code, user documentation and corporate material from SCE Research and Development. The Move.Me application will not require the PS3 system SDK or a licensing agreement, which opens the door for wide-spread idea generation and prototyping, Sony said.

The university push probably won't help Sony that much in its bid to control the motion-controller market, which Microsoft currently dominates. According to IHS Screen Digest, Microsoft initially had provided a conservative worldwide sell-in forecast of 5 million Kinect units. As it turned out, Microsoft beat that by a large margin, managing a retail channel sell-in of 8 million units by January 4, 2011. In comparison, Sony posted sell-through figures of 5.23 million Move controllers by the end of 2010 in three types: as standalone devices, a starter kit, and as a console bundle.