Former Nintendo studio Rare aims to get one over on Wii's dominant party game...

If you caught the E3 unveiling of Microsoft's Kinect Sports and was reminded in any way of Wii Sports, well, apparently that was the point. Speaking to Edge (via CVG), Rare's creative director George Andreas, who is heading up development on Kinect Sports, claimed the controllerless sports game was not merely supposed to emulate Nintendo's multi-zillion seller, but knock it off its perch.

"In terms of the competition, we looked very carefully at Wii Sports. We didn't shy away from it - we actually attack it head on, if I'm honest... We looked at Wii Sports and said, okay, if we were going to do this better, how much further can we go with this and will the consumer see an obvious improvement?"

If you've been living under a rock for the past few months, Kinect Sports is one of the premier titles for Microsoft's controller-free Kinect device, set to launch later this year.

This is the Nintendo one, if you were wondering.

Andreas goes on to tout Kinect Sports' bowling mini-game over Nintendo's, claiming it benefits from a lack of "fiddly things", presumably such as the complex 'controller' peripheral, which has notoriously caused distress in consumers' households for some years now.

Time will tell if Wii Sports will be dethroned by Rare's efforts. We'll let you know if it 'officially' is...