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The Evolution of the Revolution
Jane Pinckard, over at 1up, has a look at the evolution of the Nintendo Revolution controller...not that we have any real idea what the revolution will be. She takes a look at what we know to be untrue, and speculates on what might be. From the article: "One natural line of thinking, after eliminating the buttons and the D-pad, was that the controller would be touchable - not a far-fetched idea, since the DS uses a touch screen. What could be more intuitive than the power of touch? Throw in the microphone - another DS feature - and you have this model featured on the right; the creator kept the buttons and the analog stick, possibly to enable backwards compatibility. But the main interface of this controller concept is the spacious haptic touch screen."
It's fun to watch the joke fly over the mods' heads.
Rob
The one thing Nintendo has to worry about most now is that their offering isn't going to be as cool as the fan-made controllers.
In fact, it won't, if only because of the Nintendo ON virtual-reality video. Everyone _knows_ virtual reality isn't possible, but they'll still be disappointed when it doesn't happen.
The worst thing would be if someone guessed close to the truth - people will look and say "Oh, that's neat, I guess, but we already thought and talked about it. And why doesn't it have X?". The best thing Nintendo could do is come up with something surprising enough that people forget it's not as cool as virtual reality.
And, of course, it has to be weird enough to get major news sources to pick up on it, so Nintendo can fulfill their goal of attracting non-hardcore gamers. Even if it disappoints, if it's strange enough people will hear about the Revolution. "Game maker Nintendo revealed today that their vision of the future controller for video games is a dead cat on a string. Nintendo's system, which costs $4.99 and comes in 43 colors, can play all video games made between 1980 and 2000."
It'll get people's attention, anyway.
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
The assumption I am making, and I think most people are because it is a safe assumption, is that Nintendo's goal is to produce a better controler than is currently available. The fundamental question is how are they defining better.
Now let's face it, each of the current consoles controllers are good for specific types of games and not so good for others; that is the PS2 controller is superior for most fighting games but the Gamecube controller is better for Adventure games (and whatnot). What I am wondering is whether the controller will be designed to be superior for a small subsection of games (like Nintendo usually does, essentially designing a controller around Mario, Zelda and their Mario "sports" games) or are they going to be attempting to produce the penultimate controler?
Touchpads on laptops work well because there's no specificity to the touchpad itself, it's simply a pointing device, ie mouse. I'm not sure what the Nintendo people are doing but touchpad technology is ok if used right but people do not want to be looking at their hands when they want to be looking at the screen.
Relying on established franchises doesn't necessarily mean that Nintendo (or Sony or Microsoft) isn't being innovative. Franchise usage and innovation aren't mutually exclusive concepts.
Take Donkey Kong games as an example.
You can't really blame them for using a franchise people recognize. Square did it with Final Fantasy Tactics, too. Different gameplay, but the name will at least get your average gamer to look at the package.
e2 | LJ