Beyond - play Duo Mode, use your smartphone

Quantic Dream, developers of hugely acclaimed Heavy Rain and highly anticipated Beyond, has confirmed today that you'll be able to play dual mode in their upcoming title.

This is significant, says David Cage, because gamers were "playing with their wives, or their grandmothers" while playing Heavy Rain.

"We asked ourselves, how can we get non-gamers to play the game, and how can we get two players to play the game," he said in a press briefing this morning.

The answer, according to Cage, was to allow players to interact with the environment using a second controller which will take control of Aiden and allow you to move seamlessly throughout the world. You can switch between players and share your gaming experience "better" than in Heavy Rain, and more importantly you can do this at any time.

But Cage recognised that controllers were very intimidating for potential players.

"People look at controllers and are scared by all the buttons," he said.

"So we created an interface that you can use on your [smartphone] and is available on iOS and on Android."

This is an app-based controller and connects via Wifi, so there is no lag, as was demonstrated to us. There are no button systems, it's just a screen.

What's most impressive, however, is that you don't even need to play with a DualShock anymore, you can play the game exclusively with your smartphone. You can also play dual mode with your smartphone, or you can combine both systems.

"We used it because we know that everyone has a phone in the house and it's not scary for the people that don't play games to use their phones.

"We wanted to get the gamers that play on Facebook and say 'Hey, we have great games, come and play them' and not to scare them," said Cage.

It's an incredible system, and probably one that Sony will try to incorporate into future titles. If they do, they'll have a platform and access to a platform that, combined with the "ecosystem", will be a hard to ignore.