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Nintendo Revolution Rumours Emerge
In more next-gen console news, ComputerandVideoGames.com has rumourmongering info on the new Nintendo console. Interesting bits like gyroscope sensing controllers and an online service make for intriguing ideas, but no details yet on what's going to make this console a revolution. From the article: "And what's revolutionary about Revolution? The inside source claims that talking about that "would get him into too much trouble" ... He is quoted as saying: "if you think too hard you'll never guess what it is. It's nothing 'new', technically speaking. It's just something that hasn't really been applied to videogames yet."
Perhaps Nintendo will decide that in order to gain back market share it needs a revolution in the type of games they release.
The latest Nintendo console was fun to play on, but even given the cheap price I could find very little software that I wanted to buy. Everything halfway decent that got offered was either first-party mascots or available on another console. To me, this is really the way Nintendo needs to revolutionize itself.
I wasn't saying that there's anything wrong with Forced Feedback. I was playing Flight Simulator at a friend's house with the Microsoft FF sidewinder joystick, and I must say, it made the experience more realistic and enjoyable (but at the time it wasn't worth the $120 premium over the non-FF sidewinder joystick). The difference with that is that the FF on the joystick was fairly detailed, which included resistance in certain directions, etc.
Console controllers, on the other hand, pretty much only allow for a variation in the frequency and the intensity of the vibrations, so the effect isn't the same.
There are a variety of games, including MGS, which have used this limited feedback quite well. Another example of a good use of the rumbling is in baseball games against a friend where the controller rumbles when you're pitching out of the strike zone. The only downside to that is that most controllers make noise when they rumble anything more than a little bit, so you usually could tell when your opponent had the marker out of the strike zone.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
What I don't get is why they would bother to use gyroscopes. Analog devices sells 0-2 and 0-10G MEMS accelerometers, and the 2G model is very high resolution given an adequate sampling rate. Each chip is 2-axis, so you would have a redundant axis for calibration.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Call me jaded, but I just don't believe the Revolution is going to have anything that's going to knock our socks off. That said, here's something that might make things interesting.
How about a MMO game that makes use of GPS enabled DS units interacting via hot spots with online Revolution home players. This would be a game that makes use of the whole Earth as its play space. Perhaps Revolution units themselves would be the hot spots. If the Revolutions have hard drives, each one could store some of the game data describing its locale in the game world.
I think there's a Gizmondo game coming up that moves in this direction. But if Revolution consoles are themselves access nodes to the game for mobile units, that would be different. Games that break down the barriers between the game world and the real world would be truly revolutionary, or subversive, depending on your point of view.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I've always wanted one of those on a controller. Might make console RTS games more feasible.