Sony announces Wonderbooks; J.K. Rowling’s Book of Spells as first release

Tonight at the Sony Playstation press conference here at E3, Sony announced their Wonderbooks augmented reality offering, starting with a new book by J.K. Rowling called Book of Spells.

Book of Spells is a collaboration between Sony Playstation and Pottermore and is designed to teach you magic spells as a student at Hogwarts.

It uses the Playstation Move controller to act as your magic wand and the Playstation Eye to capture everything. It also uses a physical book, which is your book of spells and then uses augmented reality to bring it all to life.

Each task you complete earns you house points (just like in the books and films) and at the end of each level is a poem about a student at Hogwarts.

The demo looked fun, although they had a few problems with it not working exactly as it should when trying to open a door, but to be fair it wasn’t exactly normal home conditions!

And there was even a message from J.K. Rowling – it would have been a little more effective had she delivered it in person, or even on film.

There will be other books available as part of the Wonderbooks range, including educational books and stories. The only other Wonderbook to be mentioned was a storybook called Diggs Nightcrawler.

Book of Spells will be available this Holiday season, no information was given on price though.

What do you think of this new offering? Is it something you might buy for your children? Let us know.