Nintendo Revolution Controller Revealed 1210
kakos writes "At the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has revealed what the Nintendo Revolution controller looks like. The new controller is a radical departure from traditional controller types. Has Nintendo struck gold with their new controller design? The reviewers seem to think so. It should be interesting to see how gamers react to Nintendo's new innovation."
Two Words.... Light Saber (Score:4, Interesting)
Argh, my wrists! (Score:2, Interesting)
Nunchuku configuration? Imagine using a traditional controller that's been broken in half and is now only held together by a dangling fragile wire.
In a game like tekken or halo, for example, I'm rough on the controller, and I like to grip onto something solid. This does not provide.
If you don't see the inherent awesomeness... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's start off with the most obvious implementation: FPS. A genre that drives the PS2 and XBox (and dominates computers) will thrive on the Gamecube. Gone is the fiddling with the joystick. A quick flip of the controller, and you've completely turned around. Aiming is no longer tense; your hand eye coordination will allow you to better attack your enemies using a 3d mouse than with a regular controller (think about how many people are about FPS on the computer.)
Don't like FPS? Let's ignore that and move to a love of the Nintendo community: Zelda. Want to see Link do more than just two directions with his sword? No problem, since you will be controlling his sword. When you swing your arm, Link swings his. When you jab, so does he.
Want to control how tense your bow string is? Pull out the bow and arrow, go into first person mode, and extend your arm. Press a button to lock the start position, and pull back as far as you want.
Zelda isn't your thing? How about some fishing. A whip of the controller and you're casting off. You can bob the line back and forth, left and right.
And the accessories for the controller; you can be sure that these will be fairly inexpensive, meaning that companies can throw in their own little controller to add more depth to the game. How about hooking up the headphone set to talk to your buddies in online games to the controller instead of having to have an entire other attachment to the Revolution?
Now imagine that you hold the controller vertically. You're playing Star Fox. You move the controller, just like in a real jet fighter, and the plane moves with you.
Plus, you have a controller that is in one hand only. This means you can eat cheetos and play games at the same time.
The possibilities for this seem endless. Nintendo was not kidding when they named this the Revolution; we are on the edge of virtual reality, the thing that every geek has longed for since we saw the Holodeck in Star Trek: TNG. What Nintendo is doing is taking the big, hulking interactive setups of yesterday's arcades and turning them into the remote of tomorrow's homes.
You no longer control the machine; you control the character itself. Your arm swing is its arm swing. Your aim is its aim. As we've seen with DDR, gaming is turning into more of a physically interactive medium. With this controller, gone are the days of sitting around on the couch fumbling with the controller. Now, if not standing, you're leaning forward or sitting up straight, slashing with your might or blowing a hole in someone's stomach.
Just imagine if they put out pairs of goggles that really gave you the whole FPS feel.
I think Nintendo has a good chance of winning this round.
To soon to tell (Score:3, Interesting)
1). Wireless efficiency. The PC Jr. had a wireless keyboard. Is this thing going to work in a crowded house with lots of peanut butter flying around?
2) Durability. Speaking of which, how hard can you beat on these things? What's the MWBF (Mean Waves Between Failure) on this thing? Are people going to just wave them right into the rubbish bin?
3) Endurance. How long can a twelve-year-old boy wave his arms before fatigue sets in? Has anybody done any reasonable studies? What about 30-year-old overweight slashdot nerds longing for their misspent youth?
4) They are shipping at least two controllers per unit, right? 'cos if there's just one, then designers can't rely on the numchuck configuration.
Re:Two Words.... Light Saber (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, i read the article and really think this would work great and cant wait to try it.
Did the other people posting even read the article? Because I admit, at first glace it looks stupid, but after reading the demos (flying a plane, basketball, race car, Metroid Prime FPS) it sounds like it'd be really cool.
The FPS sounded especially cool, aim by moving the entire controller! Now all I need are VR googles so i'm not stuck staring at a screen across the room while my arm is pointed somewhere else.
could this be it? could this be the VR system we've all been waiting for?? The controller's perfect for it.... tell u what, if it is then it'll SLAUGHTER the xbox and ps3. I dont care if it has N64 graphics a VR system would be AMAZING.
just dont bring back the Virtual Boy [virtual-boy.org]. Anymore 2D red wire-frame graphics and i'll have to.... um, not buy it like i didnt the first time.
Re:I for one (Score:2, Interesting)
They seem pretty different to me. Here's a video (Score:3, Interesting)
While it's impossible to tell whether this move will work for nintendo, it can definitely be said that it opens interaction possibilities that just aren't possible with either console or PC gaming (which is what Microsoft and Sony have been promising). What's more, it was accomplished without getting sucked into the graphics/cpu arms race.
It's certainly different. Whether it's "Virtual Boy" different or "Nintendo DS" different remains to be seen.
Two controllers (Score:5, Interesting)
Or it could not. Of coursem, how intuitive the controls are are due to the interface design of the game. So let's just hope that game developers are able to exloit this to its fullest potential.
Re:I love the power glove... (Score:3, Interesting)
As a designer (Score:3, Interesting)
It has hard edges. Sure it looks cool as some guy uses it as a sword, but hey real swords have cylindrical handles for a reason... BECAUSE you will end up doing more damage to your own hand with a cubic handle than you will do to your enemy. Thousands of years of development went into cylinrical things we have to grasp and hold for any period of time for a reason... example, swords, clubs, baseball bats, your dicks... Even the newest television remotes are ergonomic in this sence. Granted your standard dvd remote isn't as once you press play and hit enter a few times, you put it down for an extended period, but your tv remote is pretty much glued to your hand the whole time you are surfing so studdies showed that users wanted something that was more comfortable to hold for long periods of time.
Personally I don't think it has enough buttons... it needs more buttons to look really cool, because if it is too easy to learn to use, it just isn't a game controller.
The second handle is a cool idea and will, I assume, eventually be fully thought out over a number of years to be quite useful and full featured. As to Left handed players, I guess you will all have to wait till Ned opens his new store and starts to stock them...
From an ergonomic point of view, I think extended use will cause wrist problems as the position your hand is in when holding it facing the TV is not a natural one. I think they could have done a much better job on the ergonomics by moving away from the look and feel of the console. Granted they are part of a whole, but they both have very different uses. One is for looking good on the shelf the other is for feeling good in the hand.
You say you want a Revolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
"As I retire from management, I have no words to share. Coincidental to my leaving the company, I would like to make one request: that Nintendo give birth to wholly new ideas and create hardware which reflects that ideal. And make software that adheres to that same standard. Furthermore, this software should attract consumers as new and interesting. Lastly, and of equal importance, is completing these products quickly and at a cost comparable to today's current market. I imagine most people question the feasibility of my request, but Nintendo has always pursued those objectives..."
I've watched the Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo E3 presentations. Sony and Microsoft both repeated the same thing -- we want to be the most powerful machines, and we have them here! Nintendo said, we want our machine to be easy to play and easy to develop for.
Sony said that they wanted to be a media hub. Microsoft said they wanted to break out of the male 18-34 demographic -- right before they stereo typed girls as casual gamers! Nintendo said they had something they felt would include more people in the games.
How about the games? I own Wario Ware: Twisted. It has some of the technology Nintendo has applied to the Revolution controller inside of it. It detects my hand motions, and uses those as means of control. I also have Wario Ware: touched! Between the two, you can quite clearly see that the folks at Nintendo are playing with various games and methods of controlling them (while also delivering interesting gameplay!).
While I am male and in the 18-34 demographic, I don't buy Madden every year. I don't want to buy another WW2 shooter. I don't feel like joining a 5-hour raid in WOW. I just want to have fun. I want to be able to have fun around my school, work, family, etc. I want to involve my friends and family in my fun when I can. The games Sony and Microsoft were showing weren't the games I can see doing that for me. Nintendo's games still do it for me 20 years later.
I don't think Nintendo is in trouble for this next generation.
Re:If you don't see the inherent awesomeness... (Score:3, Interesting)
At first when I saw the controller I though "WTF?" Then I read the article and my next thought was "well that's kind of cool." Then I saw the video and all I could think was "Wow."
I was hoping it'd be a gyroscope or touch pad so we'd get finer and more natual analog control. I figured a gyroscope especially would make something like a racing game really cool, like having a wireless steering wheel. And a touch pad like on laptops would be great for FPS games, at least better than the nubs we have now. However this goes way over the top of what I could have hoped for.
After reading about a few of the demos, I immediately thought of how huge this is going to be for sports type games. For example, in golf we had the 3-button press hit (with the little meter), then we had the analog flick the stick back and forth like in tiger woods, and now we can have it where you could actually swing it like a real club.
And not just golf, you could use it like the steering wheel in a racing game, a pool stick, tennis racket, for boxing, fishing, baseball (pitching and hitting even), etc, and if you got a little creative for things like basketball, volleyball, or any game where you'd move your hands to hit something.
I'm usually pretty cheap these days about games, but this may be the first console I actually want to buy at launch time since the snes.
Re:Truly Revolutionary (Score:2, Interesting)
Whereas the standard controller, with its colors and "aggressive" styling appeals directly to males.
But I guess that's the point: Nintendo is trying to get away from that stuff.
I like the idea (Score:5, Interesting)
You can see in the video that the guy pretending to be playing a FPS and wielding the first controller as a sword is having to hold that second one up to his chest. The experience would look so much more natural if he could move his arms independent of one another.
And I can't be certain from just these articles, but it doesn't look like it has gyroscopic feedback- like using gyroscopic inertia to make it feel like you're carrying something heavy, or that your sword has hit something, or that your tennis racket has hit a ball, etc. It would seem a must to me.
Actually, what I think would be ideal would be two identical wireless controllers, each with 1 analog stick, 2 trigger buttons, and 1 combination ABCD/D-pad (because we all know they're pretty much the same) as well as gyroscopic sensors and feedback. Basically break a PS controller in two.
Re:This controller kills portability (Score:2, Interesting)
I think (and hope) people will recognize this as something new and grand rather than the usual variation on a theme.
What I mean to say is, that same person might think to themselves, "The last GTA was good, but that'll hold me while I get some extra cash. This Nintendo game, though, I can't really match that with anything already in my library." Maybe they won't put it as eloquently, but you get the idea.
Muscular Geeks (Score:2, Interesting)
Does this mean that the next generation of game playing geeks will have well toned muscular arms?
Re:Suicide (Score:5, Interesting)
And the reason we have the controllers we have today are because Nintendo basically invented them. The D-pad, the analog stick, the shoulder button, force feedback/rumble vibration, the analog button, these are all timely Nintendo innovations that were copied by the rest of the industry.
Whenever new funcitons are necessary for gaming, they can be easily adapted to the controler and be utilized.
Of course in a day down the road, the functions and actions in game will require for a complete and revolutionary controller.
On the contrary, I think that there comes a point where you have to make some fundamental changes to the controller setup before certain types of gameplay can be realized in a fun and worthwhile fashion. How many people would be playing Dance Dance Revolution if it had never been paired with a "dance mat" controller?
It seems to me we've reached a functional plateau with regards to the "output" we receive from video games, the video and the audio. Sure, the graphics continue to improve, but better graphics aren't really going to change the gameplay experience that much. Also, the addition of sheer processing power isn't going to add much to the equation either, aside from perhaps slightly better bot AI and more complex simulations.
No, right now it seems that technologically, the only thing you can feasibly change to produce a revolutionary leap forward in the gaming experience is to alter the way the player interfaces with the game.
Is it too soon for this kind of "paradigm shift"? Maybe, but I don't think so. Now's the time to start experimenting, when the current crop of controllers has grown stale and even the weakest of the CPU/GPU entrants are going to be capable of producing stunning visuals, and online play is reaching maturity as a standard feature.
I think this was the right time for Nintendo to make this move. Nintendo isn't shooting themselves in the foot "again". They're a profitable company that knows pretty well by now what they're doing. They've had a few missteps (all of the players have) but they are breaking new ground, and while they may not be dominating the market again (yet), they are doing something Sony and Microsoft really haven't been doing with as much success as far as I can tell, and that is that Nintendo is essentially creating new gamers by appealing people other than 19 year old males.
I sincerely doubt this will prove a "fatal" move for Nintendo even the console doesn't catch on like it has the potential to. Nintendo may regress further into providing a niche role in the market, where they can still be a "success" in terms of greatly satisfying their customers while turning a profit ... or they may prove a success on a "revolutionary" scale and be "The" company once again ... whereas Microsoft and Sony find them in a perhaps somewhat less enviable position, one where they vie for supremacy by means of a pissing contest that has both of them producing expensive juggernauts of consoles that will likely serve as "loss leaders" for the both of them for a good long while, in a battle that may leave many customers upset at their ultimate choice of a console ("damn, I'm not really enjoying this $400 toy as much as I thought I was going to!") and one company or the other ultimately losing money from the venture instead of earning it ... or not ... I'm not an expert on this stuff, but this is how it seems to based on various articles and such that I've read.
Re:I love the power glove... (Score:5, Interesting)
I reckon it will work similar to modern virtual reality wands, with the mentioned sensors presumably doing a good job of finaggling the position of the wand. Note this is very similar to how the power glove worked, its just that the technology has gotten a LOT better due to over a decade of research in VR which seems to just now be poised to make an entrance into consumer market.
I've had the chance to play with this kind of stuff in CAVE and related applications, and it always seemed like it could be so much more, if only for some really solid software interface engineering...
Re:Two Words.... Light Saber (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to play Action Quake 2 a lot and I was pretty much a crack shot in that game. I had very little difficulty hitting characters in the head, while we were both moving, with only a couple shots, over 90% of the time. This was, of course, controlled with the mouse.
Alas the skill does not translate to a real pistol. With my actual gun the claim is more like I can put 90% or more of my shots somewhere on a man-sized paper target provided both it and I am stationary and it's not too far away from me, with both hands on the gun, in a stabalised stance.
I find it's very easy to make precision movements with a mouse, I find it's very hard to have precision control of a firearm held out in front of me.
As with anything, I'd have to try it to see, but assuming that you'd have greater accuracy simply because you are using your arm rather than your wrist and fingers isn't a good assumption. The mouse really is a good device for precision pointing.
Heck, I remember playing a VR game at the Calgary Stampede years ago. It was a nifty experience, but I always couldn't help thinking of how clunky it was. The game moved at a fairly slow pace and that was good, it was much harder to control your character than you might think, and much harder to aim accurately. I couldn't help thinking how someone who played Quake CTF would annihlate all the VR players with a mouse and keyboard.
The VR goggles... Well that another big hurdle too. It's something I looked in to, I thought it might be cool, and maybe you could hack up UT2004 to interface with them and some kind of 3d gyro control (there've been a number of companies that have produced wireless controlers for PCs that are designed to be operated in the air). Well, best deal I could find was around $800 for what was basically a TV you stuck on your head. Didn't seem to have any tracking and resolution was low. Any high-rez, with tracking headsets I could find were $3000-$15,000.
We'll have to see how the controller pans out but a VR system, I somewhat doubt. I'm thinking we'll have to see some improvements in small, high rez displays first. Right now I'm just not sure LCDs have sufficient resolution, at least at reasonable production costs, to work for this kind of thing, hence why the somewhat reasonably priced ones are low rez. I mean if you think that a high resolution LCD would be like the QUXGA LCDs a few people like IBM and Sun sold that were 3,840 x 2,400 at about 23". That works out to 179 pixels per inch. Impessive.... unless it's so close to someone's face you have only an inch or two to work with.
Perhaps as OLED advances high-rez head mounted displays will become something that's practical to buy, but at this point, I just don't think so. I don't see them as comming down to a price where console gamers would likely be intrested in the next couple of years here.
Stereoscopic 3d Glasses (Score:2, Interesting)
How about accelerometers (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than a gyro, how about a series of accelerometers (1 for every axis). If you know the acceleration in an access, derive it and you have speed. Derive it again and you have the distance moved.
This is much more likely than gryos.
--
Google innovative? Phhfft! This is Zombo-com! [zombo.com]
Re:How about accelerometers (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, you would integrate from acceleration.
And it wouldn't work very well.
Finding position from accelerometers works over short time scales, but your value drifts over time due to accumulation of errors. You need something like a pendulum to tell you absolute orientation relative to the ground. Also, you need to know what angle the controller makes with the TV, so that's probably what the external sensors are for.
TTFN
This is surprisingly being glossed over, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Recent advances in gestural technology have allowed programmers semi-Minority Report style interfacing with computers. But it's incomplete and inefficient at this point, and requires hardware (and software, for that matter) that the casual user is afraid of. But here Nintendo introduces the very first mainstream, real-time, 3-D, gesture-based interface for use every single day in the home.
The idea isn't necessarily new, nor is the technology, but until now, very few people use simple hand gestures to interface with machines they use every day. Some time next year, though, yes, we can have a near-actual swordfight, and yes, we can go fishing, but how will we navigate menus in the game? How will we navigate menus from within the Rev's own dashboard, for that matter?
This has the potential to revolutionize, not just gaming, but the way everyday people interact with their machines. Nintendo will be sure to keep the IP rights to their (wonderful--I'm drooling here) controller, to be sure, but the implications of this in technology in general are huge, and that cannot be overstated. Especially considering how much mainstream computing borrows from the gaming industry.
The Virtual Boy was too ambitious--ahead of its time for the technology available then--but I'd say the Rev is right on time, folks.
/first post :)
Re:Truly Revolutionary (Score:2, Interesting)
If you were using this controller to hammer a nail or dig a hole, you might have a point. That's not to say such games couldn't be made (swordfighting, fishing, etc). However, for "traditional" games where you control some avatar on a screen, a hammer-like grip is not the best control method. You have prehensile digits on your hands that are well-suited to tasks requiring fine motor control. In other words, buttons and joysticks work well to control traditional games, and you just can't use them well when you're gripping the controller like a hammer. Think about your DVD player remote control. Chances are it has some directional input (mine has a little control stick, and I used to have one with an iPod-like clicky-wheel, but even "normal" directional buttons would work). Would you consider playing a fast-moving action game like Super Mario Bros. with that kind of input, given the type of grip such a remote requires?
I guess the thing to keep in mind here is that I've mentioned "traditional" games multiple times. Perhaps the Revolution will eschew traditional games in favor of new styles that have never (or rarely) been tried before. Then again, it's supposedly going to be able to play games from all of Nintendo's past consoles, so you'll still need to be able to play traditional games with it. Looking at the pictures, it looks like you could simply rotate the controller 90 degrees and have a reasonable facsimile of an old NES controller (including uncomfortably sharp corners). But how are you going to use it to play SNES games that require more easily-accessible buttons than this has? Or N64 games with their own requirement of buttons and stick? Being modular is kind of cool, but is it really necessary? Why would I buy a steering wheel or dance pad controller that required me to plug it into this controller when I could instead buy a steering wheel or dance pad that connects directly to the console (wireless or otherwise)?
Chances are that the various modules for the controller will cost about the same as a stand-alone controller costs today. Why would I buy an attachment with a stick that connects to the base unit only by a flimsy cable when for the same price I could buy a full controller? This just seems like a gimic to me, and Nintendo could've provided the same functionality by offering multiple controllers for sale and building the Revolution in such a way that its input is extensible. Consider bundles: Nintendo will probably sell an N64-like attachment with a disk containing a couple of N64 games, or an SNES attachment (not sure what that would be) that includes some SNES games. I still have to pay the money and have another piece of equipment lying around, so why not just sell a full controller instead?
For me, I'm going to take the same "wait and see" attitude as I have towards the rest of the next-gen platforms. There have already been enough disappointments (Xbox360 Core, the unbelievable PS3 specs that are nowhere close to reality) and not enough must-have games for me to make a decision yet. I'll most likely end up with all three, but whether I buy at launch prices or wait a while will ultimately depend on the games. If Nintendo can provide something compelling (Wind Waker prompted me to buy a Gamecube), I'll buy. Otherwise, I'll wait.
Re:This controller kills portability (Score:5, Interesting)
making games specifically designed for this controller means that they'll ONLY work on this console, the game will be impossible (or at least VERY hard) to port to the other consoles,
I've seen FPS on consoles that were originally designed to work with mouse and keyboard.
You know what? You can also play them with a console's controller that's completely different (however, most gamers prefer the mouse/keyboard combo).
Same with this controller: Some games will run better than with standard controllers, some not so well.
But imagine playing Resident Evil and actually swing your chainsaw the way you want it! This might also bring games like Soul Calibur to a whole new level!
Re:How about accelerometers (Score:2, Interesting)
have you seen the VIDEO? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2005/09/16/443527.
Just a thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Inside was a small copper ball in a little rail, constraining the ball's movements along it's nose-to-tail axis.
- When the plane was tilted forward, the ball would roll and touch 2 contacts on the front end.
- When the plane was tilted with tail down nose up, the same ball would roll down and close a different circuit, at the tail end.
- when the plane was held horizontally, it woudnt close any circuits.
This was how the aircraft "sensed" it's angle and thereby produced take-off and landing sounds.
I believe that using this idea it would be very easy to create hardware that can orient itself.
You make a "cage" like the toy aircraft used, but in a (roughly) spherical form. You put in a matrix of electrically conducting contact points on the inner surface of the sphere. You put in a copper ball, small but heavy enough.
As you now twist and roll the sphere, the little ball moves around.
This means: if you turn the controller upside down the metal ball will touch certain points inside the sphere, allowing electric currents from those points. you could quickly calculate through "reference points" what the position of the sphere is or look it up in a table.
USAGE:
------
-best results would come from ROLLING and TURNING:
The "PATH" which the ball follows while it closes contact points could graciously followed.
-SHAKING would yield really interesting ouput from the device I presume.
Some DETAILS:
-------------
-You need gravity for this to work in a way that nintendo uses it. (easiest part, we already have that) You see the idea is: if the ball touches a circuit, it means that it's forced to touch it, either by gravity or by shaking.
-FINDING the orientation:
ADRESS TABLE: each circuitpoint has a unique ID and a table containing these ID's and their pre-calculated position on the sphere.
e.g: - circuit XYZ is closed.
- Table returns XYZ's position on Sphere
- Software calculates.
RESOLUTION:how many little circuitpoints there are, would depend on how much we'd spend on the technology and what is considered a useful resolution to play a game.
okay it's maybe far fethced, butwho cares?
Re:great idea, if it works... (Score:3, Interesting)
then again i do know how well microsofts tilt sensitive pads did.. not too well, a nice gimmick but rather crap in long run gaming.
to be frank it looks too much like cdi
Re:yep (Score:2, Interesting)
It's impossible to tell how well they implemented the idea until you get to try it for yourself, but this has the potential to be a really good controller. At the very least, it's something fresh and interesting that'll be fun to explore. And if you don't like it? You can always plug in a traditional controller instead.
Re:Cauthiously optimistic (Score:3, Interesting)
On one hand it makes perfect sense in that Microsoft are now unable to change their controller to offer similar functionality. On the other hand Sony do have enough time to rip Nintendo off. If this opens up gaming to people who dont usually play games (like nintendo says it does) then Sony would have nothing to lose and everything to gain by rushing a last minute version into the PS3.
I'm not clever enough to try and pick out who the big loser of this generation will be, however I think sony are probably fairly safe (playstation is a massive worldwide brand).
The only other prediction I will make is that Microsoft will regret rushing to market. It seems like they couldn't really make up their minds with regards to the hard drive and so have fudged it by making it optional (a pretty expensive thing to do for both MS and consumers just so you can put a tick on the spec sheet saying it supports hard drives). And Microsoft also faces the prospect of having to re-release the xbox 360 with a HD-DVD drive some time in the future which will inevitably piss off early adopters. In comparison, despite the lack of details so far, the PS3 looks like being the best all round entertainment and gaming platform.
standards... (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of it this way, it's a pointer. It's a 3D pointer with angle information. All of the games on the PC can now be done with an even more naturally 3D controller. RPG's menu systems should become a lot more intuitive with just point and click. Click on the ground and your characters will walk over to it. Click on a menu to attack. This seems somehow more civilized than trying to hotspot around with a d-pad. You can steer a plane by, well, steering a plane, or swing a bat by swinging a bat.
I suspect it will be a little uncomfortable at first, but I remember how much my thumbs used to cramp up when I first started pressing down on buttons. I also remember how uncomfortable using a mouse used to be. If you rest your elbows on a knee this should be fine.
Not to burst any bubbles, but the PS2 launch was 90% hype and conjecture that really had no intention of panning out, much the same way that ROB the robot was not intended to be used as anything other than a way to sneak into electronics stores. All system launches are like this. Remember how the Saturn was going to replace your home computer for all internet-related activities? The PS2 had nothing like this. Honestly, I've been waiting for wand input for consoles for some time now... the closest thing was the aforementioned Power Glove, but the Power Glove really was the wrong input for a batch of games that had no analog sensitivity, let along z-axis.
Nintendo knows what they are doing in general... Except for the second analog stick and L3/R3 buttons, every part of the modern controller design can be traced back to a Nintendo system... D-pad came from the NES (and the game-and-watch), the analog stick from the N64. Shoulder buttons and the diamond button layout were from the SNES. The rumble pack first appeared on the N64. So nintendo should be given some credit. Even the Virtual Boy controller was a great piece of work... the dual D-pads with triggers were perfect for TeleroBoxer.
Nintendo is positioning themselves interestingly in this next generation. With the radically visceral controller and a slightly lower system cost / power, they seem to be going for shorter, more intense experiences. This seems like a wise way to differentiate themselves from all of the other consoles and computers. For physical games, you can use the controller in a very natural fashion. Tennis on this system would be brilliant, Golf could be great. Pool. Baseball. Burnout: Revolution. I'm afraid to think of how many of these things are going to get accidentally thrown through windows, but it sounds like a fun process of discovery to me. For intellectual games like the Sims, you have a natural cursor-style input device. I'm not so sure how the z-axis would play into such an arrangement, but maybe it doesn't have to.
And then you have Tekken and a whole bunch of other games that probably can't physically be played o
Re:First thought was: (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and on another point. If the controller did have an IR port, and it could detect furniture, could you imagine your precious fps played in real life, ducking behind furniture and such? I sure can.
Re:Two Words.... Light Saber (Score:3, Interesting)
Rumble concerns (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The end of Nintendo (Score:0, Interesting)
meaning you can play almost any game. I suspect there will be a few controller shells that will be more traditional so you can play games from other systems. I mean, how do you think you're going to play all the SNES, N64, and GC games they've been promising? Way too much work to recode all of them for use with the movement sensitive new controller.
Re:Two Words.... Light Saber (Score:2, Interesting)
Finally, we can now breathe (Score:4, Interesting)
If this controller delivers half of what the video promises, it actually will deliver a revolution in gaming. My only sadness comes from the fact that many, many people will be too frightened to accept such a massive change.
If you look at the feature list, it is everything the 'true' gamer could want.
1) Controller makes completely new types of *genres* possible.
2) Backwards compatibility with 'Cube games
3) Wifi Downloadable content for all the good games of yore.
4) The design is a beautiful example of form following function
5) DVD playback you don't pay for unless you want to.
6) Cost of the hardware is probably only minimally affected by the controller. This isn't like Sony's extra $100 (or whatever) cost to include the Blu-ray drive. This is taking simple pieces and making a much better whole.
It is *almost* perfect. However, the obstacles to overcome are not insignificant, and most are brought on by the fact that the 'true' gamer wants things that Joe Six-Pack does not. There is unfortunately room for quite a bit of doubt:
1) Studios will have to throw out almost everything regarding game design that they know. This will require an entire reworking of our fundamental concepts of gaming. Read this as "huge cost of time and money, with a significant risk of loss"
2) The hardware has to work right, and not be plagued by sensor issues and bad logic.
3) Pretty sure Nintendo said no 1080i support. This is not as huge as #1 & #2, but prices on Hi-Def displays continue to creep downward.
4) Graphics, although unimportant in my eye, must be taken into consideration. Sony and MS have sold billions of consoles on screenshots alone. The public still loves teh shiny, so we can't have any moments where people think "but the XBox makes it look *real*!"
5) Adults. Nintendo, I beg of you, do not forget us. We have loved your games for years, but we've grown together. I have happily followed you into dangerous waters before, and games like Nintendogs and Animal crossing have made the journey fun. For the love of god though, can we have some games that actually cater to adults with unique challenge *and* themes?
6) Net gaming is here to stay. Can you please join us at the table of the internets? We have saved you a seat, but you missed the hors doeuvres . It's ok though, make sure you're here when the main course arrives and we'll fill you in on what you missed.
Re:This controller kills portability (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Radical Departures (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Finally, we can now breathe (Score:3, Interesting)
The fundamental concepts of gaming aren't any different. They're still the same: understandable visuals, responsive controls, feeling of progress, appropriate challenge, etc.
This is just a reworking of how controllers work. That's all. It's very cool, and it will lead to new game types for sure, but it hasn't obsoleted the rest of the gaming universe, it's just expanded it. Sure there will be learning curve, but I don't think it's going to be as bad or disruptive as you think.
Re:Suicide (Score:3, Interesting)
Motion detection with IR camera...? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok, I imagine that a gyroscope is quite expensive. It will require either a high-speed wheel of some sort, bearings and detectors. It is also quite delicate, and to imagine a gyroscope that should survive a kid dropping it on a floor...? An optic gyscope perhaps, but then the price tag would be quite different...
Furthermore, a gyroscope (mechanical or optical) will only detect twists and turns. It will not detect movements along the three axes, which is something the controller can detect.
And then there is the two small devices that needs to be placed with some distance, one on each side of the TV/monitor....
But... What if these two small devices were IR diodes, and the controller contained a small camera for motion detection....?
It would then be able to calculate twists, turns and movements along the axes, by looking at the diodes, and calculate the movements! It woul certainly give the wanted precision in some of the directions (depending of the IR camera resolution, of course)
Another thing that could hint some IR detector on the controller, is the 'window' on the end that points in the direction of the TV/monitor. I do not see an IR receiver on the 'Revolution'...
Comments anyone...?
Re:Finally, we can now breathe (Score:3, Interesting)
As for net gaming, I know that at E3 Iwata said he's doing all he can to make sure there's a net-enabled version of SSB out at the Rev's launch. That's a very good sign, if you ask me.
I'm mostly worried about how much third parties will embrace this thing. I know a lot of my favorite people have been saying good things, and even EA is, which is a good sign. But who knows?