"Nokia Wii" used to play Halo, PoP in 2004: pics, details

Nokia was working on a wireless controller it used for playing Halo and Prince of Persia in 2004, two years before Wii came to market.

VG247 has seen the device, as well as an internal video presentation that showed a man covered in various motion sensors playing a snowboarding game on a TV.

The unit itself has a trigger on the bottom and another main button on top, as well as four coloured play buttons under the Nokia logo.

Staff working on the prototypes used to "wear" up to seven of them while testing, as well as holding them in two hands.

The unit we saw, which you can see in the gallery below, included gyroscopes, magnetometers and accelerometers. Nokia also created another version with a joystick, giving five degrees of freedom in one hand. The team used to play Halo, Prince of Persia "and those kind of games" with the controller.

Nokia's well-documented failure in the games space meant the device never came to market, but shows clearly that the firm had designs on the higher end of the market.

Functionality appears to be similar to the Zeemote, a current third-party peripheral compatible with Nokia's phone.