Perhaps you’re looking at the future of hands-on gaming.

It’s called Darwin, and it’s a motion-sensitive game controller rumored to work with Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and maybe Sony’s PlayStation 3. Manufacturer Motus Games unveiled the two-part device Friday, after months of speculation over what Motus was doing with the thing during product development. Guestimates put Darwin’s market debut at a year from now.

Darwin mimics Nintendo’s Wii motion controller in function but distinguishes itself with a key technical difference: Darwin reportedly relies on sensors that orient it to magnetic north for determining location relative to the game console. (Wii’s controller works with infrared radiation.)

Videos posted at Motus’ website show that Darwin works in one piece as a long wand — good for simulating a golf club, it seems — or in two parts with separate sets of directional and power control buttons.

At first glance, the tube shape might afford better grip than Wii’s plastic rectangle, but Game Guy wonders how easy it will be to adapt to a bunch of extra controls, some of which seem positioned to create confusion. More interesting though is the idea of a wand that takes direction from the Earth’s magnetic field. That suggests you could carry Darwin with you from console to console, anywhere in the world, and it would work just as well without first going through a lengthy setup sequence.

We’ll see what happens at E3, where Darwin is sure to draw a crowd. It might even make a monkey out of Wii’s wand.