Wii Head Tracking... Why doesn't Nintendo market this?
This vid has been around forever with well over 7 milllion views but it surprises me how many people have never heard of this before. It came up in a thread earlier today so I figured I'd link it here. Basically it creates a sense of you being literally "in the game" and 3D objects coming out of your screeen. It sounds too good to be true, but the technology is already in place and yet Nintendo doesn't use it....
It's so simple, yet the results are so amazing. It's as simple as switching the placement of the Wii controller and the sensor bar. Watch the vid, it's 5 minutes and if you've never seen it before you'll never think of video games in the same way ever again.
Thoughts? Comments? Anyone else pissed off at Nintendo for not making games like this?
It's so simple, yet the results are so amazing. It's as simple as switching the placement of the Wii controller and the sensor bar. Watch the vid, it's 5 minutes and if you've never seen it before you'll never think of video games in the same way ever again.
Thoughts? Comments? Anyone else pissed off at Nintendo for not making games like this?
Comments
~~NGD
It would be neat to add the ability to dodge in shooters, but I'm not sure I see the practicality for many other genres.
~~NGD
I do agree that some interesting puzzle game mechanics could come from something like this.
I dunno arch, this seems perfect for puzzle games. You could pull pieces out towards you, and put them back into the correct spot or something. I think this could be used for about any genre pretty easily, at least via small mini games or something. Imagine a Metroid where you could lock onto space pirates based like this, wow!
~~NGD
Like I said, you start to get angry when you think of all of the possibilities that could come from this... Notice the post date was December 2007, this is almost 2 years old and Nintendo hasn't even tried to do a teaser trailer with this!!!
or
~~NGD
yeah, you'll need an immersive screen too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yan8R4aZfhg
eh. I've been to a cave installation, and they really should have invested in doing a curved wall. The corner where the two main walls come together is awfully distracting in the video, and even more so in person.
something like this would work well for subtle improvements to a game-think about peeking around a corner in an fps or metal gear game by actually sticking your head out.
A "peeking" mechanic would be a neat way to use it, but as Bunny pointed out, the majority of FPS gameplay only involves eye-movement.
Not sure if you guys realized this, but the majority of ANY gameplay (other than Wii) involves only eye-movement. However, the Wii has been made as this innovative system which requires like an 8x8' space of room to move around to utilize the controls. Whether you are dancing on the Wii Fit, swinging the Wiimote like a baseball bat or whatever, the emphasis on Wii games has been movement.
So why wouldn't Nintendo take this to the next level and create an FPS game that involves movement as well? That's the entire concept of the Wii, to think outside of the box. It could create an entire new FPS genre...
A "peeking" mechanic would be a neat way to use it, but as Bunny pointed out, the majority of FPS gameplay only involves eye-movement.
Not sure if you guys realized this, but the majority of ANY gameplay (other than Wii) involves only eye-movement. However, the Wii has been made as this innovative system which requires like an 8x8' space of room to move around to utilize the controls. Whether you are dancing on the Wii Fit, swinging the Wiimote like a baseball bat or whatever, the emphasis on Wii games has been movement.
So why wouldn't Nintendo take this to the next level and create an FPS game that involves movement as well? That's the entire concept of the Wii, to think outside of the box. It could create an entire new FPS genre...
I guess my feeling is that:
(1) the controls on something like MP3 are already great. They can get a few years of mileage out of games that use the point-and-shoot mechanic, for a considerably more immersive experience than what you get with a controller or mouse/keyboard.
(2) I've used a similar mechanic in an arcade game back in 2002, I think. It was called "Police trainer" or something, and it tracked whole body movement, in combination with a light gun shooter.
It was a lot of fun, and would be a great use of the technology, but I don't think it would translate well into a full-on FPS.
At some point you cross a threshold where all of these stacked mechanics make the game too complicated to play effectively. When you're pointing-and-shooting with one hand, leaning and leaping around the room to dodge/peek/look, and running/sneaking/crouching/jumping with thumbstick in your other hand, the whole thing may be inaccessible to most players.
what would be cool is maybe certain levels in games like zelda were you have to do a peek, but i don't know i'd want to play an entire game like that, certain parts would be cool though
^^^ Once again, while this is the first time I've seen it done with a Wii remote, the tech for this has been around for a LONG time and is almost definitely patented by some other group. Nintendo probably sees no reason right now to lose dollars to licensing fees.
I suppose this is possible, but why try to rain on the parade? You seem to have the "I can't there from here" mentality while I have the "Let's cross that bridge when we get there" type of thinking. I know I'm not alone in saying this technology would cause me to buy a Wii since Frisbee already agreed. Let the lawyers duke it out and you'll make more than enough in sales to foot the bill.
Besides, Microsoft and Sony decided it was worthwhile to have a costly battle over HD Technology in the BluRay and HDVD war. Nintendo has made more than enough money to try and pursue something that is both high risk and high reward.
I say let them play!
But the "letting the lawyers duke it out" would probably cost them 8 figures depending on how they go at it.
I'm not trying to rain on the parade, just offering a very plausible explanation for why this technology hasn't been deployed by Nintendo yet.
EDIT to add: As for "crossing the bridge when we get there"...it's also plausible/probable that Nintendo HAS crossed that bridge and decided it wasn't worth it right now.
Businesses don't go around advertising the events of closed meetings, and pursuing something like this would probably be kept secret until the last possible moment, for fear of copycats/other licensees. So they very well could have looked into this right away, and we never would have heard about it.
Patents like that get through all the time. Personally, I think it's ridiculous, to some extent...but that's the current system
Without high-contrast gloves/clothing for easy ID, I'm not exactly sure how Natal would detect relative position of different parts of your body.