Up until now, artificial reality objects have suffered from a disconnect. Much like an actor on a green-screen set, or a weatherman pointing at a map he can't see, the mix of the unreal and the player's body can be unsatisfying.

The PS2 Eyetoy let users play with a virtual monkey – but when there's no physical link, the game quickly becomes an exercise in pointing at a monkey that doesn't exist and trying to please said monkey in accordance with a variety of seemingly arbitrary rules. It's all a bit weird, really.

It's like Harry Potter, yeah, but for kids

Enter Wonderbook. The majority of AR codes have been flat things printed on stickers or cards that project a 3D image into footage of the real world when viewed through a certain program.

Wonderbook is a physical hard-backed book, covered in codes, that lets the player touch something while they play and view their actions onscreen through the PlayStation Eye camera. It's a controller for the medium, in other words – a physical link to the computer.

Sony's big tie-in with Wonderbook is Book of Spells, a clearly hard-fought link with the Harry Potter series and written, in part at least, by J K Rowling herself.

As well as a game that teaches the player a variety of spells through waving the Move controller in a certain pattern (making a "Z" shape, for example, has fireballs arc from the end of your onscreen wand) it's a gentle exploration of the universe – set in Hogwarts 200 years prior to the event of the novels, it deals with the origins of popular spells through storybook techniques.

While a narrator that sounds a lot like David Tenant – but who, crucially, isn't David Tenant – reads from words subtitled on screen, the characters in the book come to life.

Paper dragons crawl out of the pages and fly around. 3D images of equipment are projected onto the book and can be rotated by the viewer to get a proper look – dragonhide gloves, for example, or ancient statues. Even during puppet-show cutscenes, the entire paper stage can be viewed from any angle. It's charming stuff.

Making the virtual physical

The book behaves like a real book – as you'd hope, really. The pages are turned to advance play (there are five chapters with four spells apiece, with each chapter lasting around half an hour) and if the book is "damaged" in game, the player must fix it.

That aforementioned dragon can burst free and set the book on fire, so players must first pat it out and then sweep soot off it. In every interaction, the player's hands interact smoothly with the book and the wand, and there's rarely a disparity which sees the virtual items overlaying real ones.

Playing with the physical items and watching their virtual counterparts is fantastic. Sony has nailed the link between the physical and digital worlds in a way that's not been done before, even by more complex devices like the Kinect, and it shows.

The weight of the book coupled with the vibration of the wand and the visual uplink provides constant feedback to the player in a way that's sorely lacking elsewhere in the world of artificial reality.

The intended audience for all this is, of course, kids. Aside from the Harry Potter connection, much of what's happening is fairly basic in a way that will engage younger players but see older ones looking for more – and it's not clear whether Wonderbook can offer them what they're looking for. Whether it means to or not is an entirely different matter.

Anything aside from wizards, then?

Information about other titles is thin on the ground at time of writing – presumably because Sony is keen to focus on its boy wizard tie-in to get units off shelves this Christmas. Diggs Nightcrawler, a fairytale detective from the series of eponymous kids' books, is getting his own title and Gamescom saw the announcement of both the BBC and Disney offering IPs for the platform, with the Beeb putting forward an interactive version of its popular documentary Walking With Dinosaurs.

Although there have been hints that Marvel and DC may provide downloadable comics that would sync up with the hardware, it's hard to see how game elements could improve reading them and stand alongside AAA comic titles such as Arkham City.

While the book is an excellent piece of kit, as is the software that supports it, ideas for how to exploit it past the initial Potter-themed release don't spring to mind. Even though the strong release title will see the Wonderbook in many more houses than it otherwise would be keeping the market interested is going to be a challenge.

That the book is an old medium being dragged into a new age – while other media, such as smartphones, tablets and e-readers such as the Kindle – are fast replacing it. Wonderbook is an exercise in nostalgia aimed at an audience who don't have the experiences needed to trigger the memories of when books were the primary means of engaging young imaginations.

Or, perhaps rather more smartly, it's aimed at their parents. The low price point (£30 - £40 for the Wonderbook bundled with Book of Spells, though you'll have to supply your own Move controller for the wand) is a draw, certainly.

As is the intuitive nature of play, which would let younger or older people inexperienced with traditional controls enjoy the game much in the same way as the Wii. But crucially, neither of those groups own Playstation 3 consoles – which may prove to be a problem.

While Sony will no doubt offer bundle packs of console, book, Move controllers and game come December, the price might be too high for families who already own, for example, a Wii.

Trying to establish the PS3 as a family console this late into its lifecycle is, perhaps, not the best idea. That shouldn't stop you buying the Wonderbook come Christmas if you know anyone under the age of 12 with a fixation on the Potterverse who has even limited access to a PS3 – this is an incredible toy for them to engage with the fiction on an entirely new level. Even playing this early build three months before release has made that clear.

Hiring JK Rowling to write your game can't be cheap, and following a disappointing year of PS Vita sales thanks to a lack of solid games means that Sony must be pinning a lot on the success of this plastic-and-cardboard add-on.

Although it seems like a one-trick pony, that might be all they need – and as far as their audience is concerned, it's the best possible trick they could have pulled.