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TrueMotion Game Controller a Step Up From Wii Remote
Harry McCracken writes "One of my top picks at the Consumer Electronics Show was Sixense's TrueMotion, a game-controller technology that resembles the Wii's remote, but uses an electromagnetic field to provide far more precision — it knows the exact location of the controller in 3D space and which way you're pointing it. (The Wiimote only knows which direction you're moving the controller.) TrueMotion-based remotes are due by Christmas, bundled with a PC game for under $100."
According to the Heisenburg uncertainty principle its impossible to know both where an object is precisely, and where its heading.
The Wii remote is accurate enough, for me anyway. I don't use my Wii for anymore then some Wii Sports, Super Mario and Zelda. Consoles aren't meant to be these uber lean mean fighting machines with top of the line parts. If I want that, Ill go play on my computer. Console gaming will never be more advanced then computer gaming and it shouldnt be.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
The statement "The Wiimote only knows which direction you're moving the controller" is not accurate, The Wiimote has a three axis accelerometer in addition to an infrared camera. The camera looks for two infrared LEDs on the "sensor bar" and depending on the distance between the LEDs and their position in the image from the camera the Wiiremote can fairly accurately determine where it is pointed on the screen.
I Don't Work Here
It's obvious to anyone who's done serious research that the true draw of the Wii isn't its controls, but rather the social interaction through gaming it encourages. A Wii isn't a toy for a sullen adolescent; it's something the whole family can gather around, like the radio in days of yore. A Wii in the home will strengthen any family.
PC games on the other hand, do exactly the opposite. They encourage seclusion and disconnection from others. The only interaction a PC gamer experiences is when he "frags" someone or "pwns" a "n00b". My mother (age 75) comes to play Wii Sports with my family. But would you drag your mother out for a round of Quake? How would you even hook up the keyboards to the TV? It just makes no sense. Adding motion controls to Quake isn't going to make it any less antisocial.
This is just another long line of technologists "solving" the wrong problem. Motion controls won't save the dying PC games industry. A radical refocus on shared, family-room gaming could, but that niche is already filled by the Wii. Why is it that some companies (Nintendo, Apple) "get" that not everything can be solved by throwing more "gigs" or "bits" at something, but no one else can?
Im sure it will work for Windows..
What kind of an API can we get for the Linux side? I mean, I can think of some rather cool ideas (like using one to trace a wall for input on a virtual wall and using the remote to draw on the v-wall).
And what's the power output like, along with frequency?
Soo may questions, so little information.
There is no economic sense in a game developer using this. Until Microsoft mandates that a bit of hardware is required for a "Genuine" windows machine, it will not factor in to any rational developers plans. And in this case its never going to happen, because it notionally excludes laptops, and no matter how painful it is in reality to play a mouse and keyboard game on a touchpad, its still "possible".
Anyway, MS want PC gaming dead just as much as everybody else now that X360 has been a relative success: any hardware innovation has to come from single source manufacturers, and in reality that means console manufacturers - and only Nintendo actually wants to even try - and Apple. All the clone makers just like to cower in a corner and pray for a behemoth like Intel, MS, or Google to innovate for them...
Its sad really, that the 80's with myriad incompatible silos of innovation seem so bright nowadays...
I don't know about you, but when I use my computer, I'm sitting at a desk with a keyboard and a mouse. I'm too close to my monitor to start pointing a remote at it.
I also can't imagine putting the remote down, use the keyboard, picking the remote again, repeat.
The Wiimote is a great idea because we can't really use a mouse when sitting in front of a TV, and crappy, small, over-touchy analog sticks on a gamepad is a stupid idea to begin with.
Now people will be able to bump against walls of the room and fall out of windows as they try to duck the enemy fire.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Any serious (or even medium) gamer who uses their laptop for gaming will have long ago paired a mouse up with their laptop.
It's not the case that gaming with the touchpad is possible, it sucks. The case is that people just grab a mouse. Who here can honestly say they don't know where they could get a free usb mouse?
when can I strap one of these things to my dong and control some kind of dildo device on the other end of a camera?
A Wii in the home will strengthen any family.
"The family that plays together...stays together."
"The family that Wiis together...is unhygienic."
Squirrel!
...or at least good specs, there will be lots of people developing for this thing. At least one, me :-)
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Perhaps I'm overly cynical of input technologies, but my take from the movie is that this is a *disaster*.
Start with the best configuration the company could manage for the demo, with in-house software, and an experienced user. The system is still laggy and periodically jerky. It has the same lack of feedback as the Wiimote, so you need similarly simple gestures to make it usable. Their one advantage is that the position sensor should be orientation-independent, whereas the Wiimote's camera needs to see the sensor bar.
If memory serves (and it often doesn't) the two major problems with EMF position sensing in AR are range and interference. Range should be solvable for a local input device. Interference worries me. With a near-optical system, interference sources are obvious: if your Wiimote has problems, look around for the strong light source.
Of course the blog-based press releases do not bother communicating actual benefits or limitations of the technology, beyond "ooh, shiny!" and "ooh, revolutionary!".
This isn't new; it's just cheaper. Magnetic motion tracking devices have been around for two decades. I had a chance to try "virtual ping pong", like this thing does, on an Autodesk system demoed at the Hacker's Conference two decades ago. All the gloves-and-goggles systems use magnetic trackers like this. So do some of the tracking systems used for motion capture. If you've been to SIGGRAPH, you've probably seen a dancer up on a platform wired up with multiple sensors, driving an animated character on a screen.
The early systems suffered from serious lag, noise, and accuracy problems. The sensing was noisy enough that it had to be low-pass filtered, which introduced lag. You moved, then waited for the display to catch up. This was a killer problem with head-mounted VR. Accuracy was a problem. Even relative accuracy wasn't that good. When I saw these things at SIGGRAPH, I'd sometimes gesture to the dancer demoing the thing to put her hands together, forefinger to forefinger. If the character on screen showed the forefingers touching, the system had decent relative accuracy. Usually it didn't.
It's hard to tell from the video how accurate this new version is. With single-sensor demos, you can't see if there's serious error. But it's cheap. The Polhemus systems cost thousands of dollars.
I could give a damn about a 3D game controller. But I would very much like to see cheap 3D input devices for animation and motion capture. Perhaps we'll first see this new Wii remote retrofitted to 3D software like Max. Can't happen soon enough!
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Am I the only one that saw this an immediately thought this would be perfect for head tracking and full immersion software?! This is EXACTLY what I have been waiting, *especially* if you can use multiple devices! 2 would be perfect for an FPS, one for the hand and one for the head - then you just add in a set of those "personal theater" eyeglasses with two inputs instead of one an you can add stereoscopic vision to the package! Seems like we're just a year away from a pretty ideal full-immersion home gaming system!
Latency seems to be pretty high, doesn't it?
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
[Citation Needed]
1. That's funny because my mom and dad are currently raiding together in WoW. Two different PCs in the same room. (Well, actually four PCs, but they're complete nerds like that.) You don't need a single TV to play together, you know.
Apparently they're getting along better than ever too. Now they actually have a common topic and interest again. So there you go, you can use PCs for the whole family too.
They also played together on other consoles than the Wii too before. There were and are plenty of N64, Playstation, Dreamcast, PS2, XBox, etc, games that can be played together on a single screen. There's a reason why every single bloody non-portable console ever made had more than one controller socket. The Wii didn't invent that.
Heck, there were plenty of games played on a shared screen on personal computers too. E.g., about half the games on the old Spectrum supported two players on the same screen. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of PC games did too (e.g., I remember playing Golden Axe together with my brother or with a visiting friend, on the same screen and keyboard.)
You can play together on two PSP's via its built-in wireless network. I would imagine that the same applies to a DS, though sadly I don't own one to check out.
So let's let this bullshit meme die already. Just because you lack the imagination to gather your family around anything else than a Wii, doesn't make the Wii anything uniquely magical. It just means you lack an imagination.
Note that I have nothing against the Wii itself at this point. But it's just another of the _many_ things you can play together. Let's drop the falsehood that it's the _only_ thing for the whole family, and that PCs are somehow just for antisocial adolescents.
2. Also, Quake is at best strawman there. Not every PC game is Quake. There are PC games ranging from ultra-competitive twitch-games, to cooperative-only games. There are games ranging from from violent like Quake to:
- stuff like The Sims which is a glorified doll house, and sold to a lot of women. So, yes, you could probably drag your mom to play The Sims without turning her antisocial,
- stuff like Catz or Dogz which are a sort of a high-tech Tamagochi. Again, I could see anyone's mom spending at least a few minutes with a virtual kitten. (And if you think that's antisocial loner gaming, note that Nintendo too did release games like Nintendogs.)
- a plethora of Barbie games for little girls, plus a few other similar games without the franchise
- logic games like The Incredible Machines, or the Creatures series which combined caring for cutesy creatures with building elaborate... well, incredible machines, to keep them separated
Etc, etc, etc.
If you're going to address something as broad as PC gaming, then make sure you actually address PC gaming as a whole, not just some convenient niche that fits your preconceived point.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When was the last time you played on a Console. Go ahead, tell us?
You can buy upgrades for the 360.
You can install games onto a console.
You have to patch a lot of games out on consoles these days because of bugs.
PC gaming isn't anymore expensive than the consoles when they're brand new, and when they're brand new, they tend to have more features than their second and third generation counter parts (and so on).
The only thing you might have is gameplay, but that's only because certain types of games don't work to well with mouse + keyboard combo, but gamepads have existed forever to negate that.
So tell us, when was the last time you played on a console? And what Console? Furthermore, when's the last time you did PC gaming? You seem to lack some knowledge on both fronts.
They encourage seclusion and disconnection from others.
That must be why my brothers and I would play Age of Empires networked, in the same house, and then chat about it afterward.
I mean, it did encourage disconnection when we played Unreal Tournament, but that's only because I kicked their asses so bad they got mad at me...
model animation? Like those used in hollywood?
Yes, mocap suits fitted with a bunch of inertial sensors exist. It's cheaper than optical systems (with the "ping pong balls"), and in some ways easier to use (you don't need to worry about occlusion, for instance), but integrator drift is always a problem.
I love the part that says "due by Christmas". So does that mean that it's currently at least 3 weeks late, or does someone have a really aggressive marketing department that likes to announce things waaaay too early?
- James
The Motion Plus is a small device that snaps into the bottom of the Wii remote to increase precision. Look for it soon to be packaged with Wii Sports Resort as well as a stand alone package.
It was demonstrated at E3 and looked very good.
+5 points for the idea, -500 for being months behind Nintendo.
http://blog.dawnofthegeeks.com/2009/01/01/a-better-wiimote-pointer/
You have to use the accelerometer data and the IR data in order to figure out where the wiimote is located in 3D space and what direction it is pointing.
http://blog.dawnofthegeeks.com/2009/01/08/elmos-world-the-video-game/
Elmo's World: The Video Game is a homebrew product with 3 mini games demonstrating the use of the Wiimote as a pointing device.
The TrueMotion controller uses a lot more sophisticated materials and methods to get a more accurate reporting of location and direction of the pointer. The biggest advantage is not having to be pointed at a light source so you can face it away from the screen and its location is still known.
With the Wiimote the Wii has to make some assumptions about location when the Wiimote can't see the IR lights. In those cases it tries to make use of the accelerometers to figure out how the wiimote is moving to keep everything accurate. As soon as two IR light sources are in view it can get the (somewhat) exact location again.
It wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo as some point releases an updated Wiimote that does away with the IR sensor. The issue for them is always cost. Nintendo seems to try to make the best use of current technology that can be assembled under a certain price point. If they could build a TrueMotion like system and sell it for no more than the current Wiimote they'd most likely do it. In the meantime the Wiimote as is works well enough and meets the price requirements.
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It didn't really seem that sensitive and the lag really bugged me.
As an added bonus, you can automatically play the "Mess with Grandpa's pacemaker" game.
(Note, if you are going to start blabbing about how the field isn't strong enough or something like that: preemptivewoosh)
If you've been to SIGGRAPH, you've probably seen a dancer up on a platform wired up with multiple sensors, driving an animated character on a screen. [But...] Even relative accuracy wasn't that good. When I saw these things at SIGGRAPH, I'd sometimes gesture to the dancer demoing the thing to put her hands together, forefinger to forefinger. If the character on screen showed the forefingers touching, the system had decent relative accuracy. Usually it didn't.
Some of these real-time motion capture systems have a cartoon character with exaggerated proportions on the other end. Character proportions in some art styles are supposed to differ from those of the actor; that's how we get Precious Moments figurines that are 2.6 heads tall, not the typical 6 to 8 of a human. How would you expect a mo-cap system to correct for short, stubby fingers on some characters?
It'll make economic sense when the consumer can get the controller for under $50 and can make use of it with software they already have.
I put together an Elmo game
http://blog.dawnofthegeeks.com/2009/01/08/elmos-world-the-video-game/
for my daughter who's not quite 2 yet using the Wiimote and the XNA Game Library. But since it costs $40-50 for the controller plus $20 or so for a bluetooth adapter there's probably not going to be much demand for Wiimote enabled games on the PC.
However if PCs came equipped by default with a bluetooth adapter and games started making the Wiimote an optional controller it would be tempting for people to purchase a Wiimote even if they don't have a Wii.
Likewise if this TrueMotion controller costs as much or less than any other high end game controller and has a lot of support in existing games people would spend the money to get it. The TrueMotion people need to work with Valve, Id and others to encourage them to come out with a free patch that makes the TrueMotion controller work with the popular games already out.
The only thing I don't like about using the Wiimote with the PC is that connecting isn't as easy as pressing the A button. If TrueMotion is easy to use for the consumer and gets below $50 I'd definitly switch from messing with the Wiimote.
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That's funny because my mom and dad are currently raiding together in WoW. Two different PCs in the same room. (Well, actually four PCs, but they're complete nerds like that.) You don't need a single TV to play together, you know.
Not every family has enough complete nerds to warrant budgeting the purchase of a PC for each household member and replacements when new games no longer work and old games are out of print. Some families would even have to buy more PCs than household members if they want to host play dates. Case in point: you can buy an Xbox 360 Elite or a slim PC, a 32" 720p monitor, and extra controllers for 1,200 USD. For the same price, you could buy four Eee PCs, but would their video performance keep up with even the GameCube? And you'd still have to buy a separate copy of each game for each player. (Full disclosure: I babysit my cousins.)
There's a reason why every single bloody non-portable console ever made had more than one controller socket.
TurboGrafx-16 had one port (instead using a hub), as did 3DO (instead using daisy-chaining), but that still supports your point.
You can play together on two PSP's via its built-in wireless network. I would imagine that the same applies to a DS, though sadly I don't own one to check out.
Many DS games support local multiplayer through "Ni-Fi", a proprietary non-routable layer 3 protocol on top of Wi-Fi. But a lot more DS games have multiplayer through DS Download Play (counterpart of PSP's Game Sharing) than PSP games, which tend to have only a single-player demo if anything at all, so PSP games cost $70 for two copies when a Wii game costs $50 for one.
The joy of the WII controller is that it uses only infrared light, which to my knowledge, has never been shown to be harmful to humans. The idea that all sorts of little children playing video games will endure hours of magnetic field influence on their bodies should scare the Slashdot population. There are numerous cases where magnetic fields emminating from electric lines are blamed for increases in cancer rates, especially amongst children. Exposing children to more magnetic fields is probably a really bad idea. There's another problem of course with magnetic fields, which is that they degrade quickly at the edges. This can lead to significant problems with game play. Having worked on virtual reality systems, I'd experience this often. The key thing is that the user must remain within the field. Though it is a field, so it naurally curves and is inconsistent. This can really hamper multi-player ability since keeping the magnetic field weak not to interfere with other electronics, will limit the size of the field. The other solution is of course to increase the strength of the fields, which could lead to other problems like those mentioned above. This is not new technology in any way, neither is it particularly innovative; no news. That they'd create a controller that is potentially harmful to the audience they're serving, well that's not something I can support.
The NES, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, N64, and probably other consoles I can't remember have required memory upgrades to play certain games. The Dreamcast, PS2, Original XBOX, XBOX 360, and PS3 have OS updates and game patches. I can't think of any console that offered a processor upgrade off the top of my head (the Jaguar maybe?).
Sega Genesis had the Sega CD, which contained a processor faster than the one in the Genesis. It also had the 32X, which was about half as powerful as the Saturn. But all "memory upgrades" for the North American and European NES (that is, everything but the Japan-only Famicom Disk System) have been limited to memory chips inside the Game Pak, the same sorts of memory chips used for saved games in Sega Genesis and Super NES carts. And what kinds of user-installable OS updates are you talking about for Dreamcast or PlayStation 2?
PC gaming used to be dominated by point and click adventure games and flight sims. These genres didn't transition to the consoles, they faded in popularity.
As far as I know, point-and-click adventures did transition to the DS and Wii. See Hotel Dusk, the Ace Attorney series and Zack and Wiki . Even Myst got ported to DS.
It's not going to happen unless people stop using PCs or manufacturers refuse to make gaming hardware for PCs.
Both Microsoft and Logitech make game controllers, but it's hard to buy one with a PC. I just went to HP.com's gaming accessories page and saw only keyboards, mouse, and speakers, not the gamepads that would be useful for two or three people sitting in front of a TV playing an arcade-style game on an HTPC. Dell has them though.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying consoles (Wii included) don't have their advantages. In fact, I'm usually on the console side of PC-vs-Consoles flamewars. So I'm not going to argue with you much about the price, etc.
My main problem is merely with the false dichotomy of, basically, "Wiis are for the whole family, PCs only have Quake-like stuff for antisocial teenagers". It's just plain old not true. The average PC gamer is actually in the 30's nowadays, and even the retired senior citizen extreme is actually on the rise in, say, MMOs. And I fail to see how cooperative gaming, local network or MMO counts as antisocial. That is really my whole problem with the OP's point.
That said, actually you don't need that expensive a PC to play some games. WoW for example does run semi-acceptably even on an Eee laptop, and there are Youtube videos documenting it. (Only since you mention the Eee in your example.) Admittedly, you won't play Crysis Warhead on that, and even WoW will have some 8 frames per second, but it can be played on it if you must.
That said, though, you can buy a semi decent PC nowadays for a couple of hundred Euro, and it won't be as handicapped as the Eee. A cheap lowest-end integrated Intel chipset and a proper desktop CPU (as opposed to the underpowered Atom), will run WoW plenty fast. I know people who play it on such low end old computers. So maybe you won't buy 4 of them for your $1200 limit, but two or even three is definitely possible.
I'm looking on Alternate at the moment to check it -- and it's not even the cheapest internet store -- and I see some decent mini-tower systems for 399 Euro. (Google says that's 539.0091 U.S. dollars, but bear in mind that prices are _including_ a rather large VAT here, so maybe you can get the same cheaper in the USA.) I'm talking stuff like dual-core Athlon 64, a semi-decent ATI or NVidia graphics card, and 1 GB RAM. It's not just plenty enough for WoW, it could even run COH more than acceptably. You could certainly fit two of those under that $1200 limit.
Again, I'm not dissing consoles in any form or shape. Just saying that a family playing an MMO together is certainly feasible too nowadays. You no longer have to be a millionaire to afford a second computer.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Not really, because indie gaming is possible on Linux, and Linux doesn't only run on PCs.
Sounds like a great controller but it won't benefit from the network effect like the wiimote.
I finally got a wii, it sat for about 7 months before I finally used it.
It's okay- I bowl on it. The star trek game seems pretty painful so far.
What I'd like is a basic RTS. seems like a dream combo.
I have a 55" screen and control seems fine.
This new remote is better- but because it is an add on, not a standard feature, it will join a million other great controllers that we don't even remember.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm not saying consoles (Wii included) don't have their advantages. In fact, I'm usually on the console side of PC-vs-Consoles flamewars.
I'm on the fence, but I wish I were on the HTPC side. Indie developers can self-publish for PC; they can't easily for a console without rewriting the whole game in C# (or a dialect of C++ that looks more like C#), paying $495 extra for 5 years of access to XNA Creators Club, and praying that their game will be included in the next batch of Community Games. On the other hand, there just aren't enough arcade-style games for PCs other than emulators that use either legal ROMs (e.g. Midway Arcade Treasures) or wink-wink-nudge-nudge copies (e.g. most installations of MAME or Nestopia). Yet.
That said, though, you can buy a semi decent PC nowadays for a couple of hundred Euro, and it won't be as handicapped as the Eee. A cheap lowest-end integrated Intel chipset and a proper desktop CPU (as opposed to the underpowered Atom), will run WoW plenty fast. I know people who play it on such low end old computers. So maybe you won't buy 4 of them for your $1200 limit, but two or even three is definitely possible.
I included the console's monitor in my $1,200 build. What monitors were you thinking about in your $600 build, other than perhaps a used CRT from a charity thrift store?
I see some decent mini-tower systems for 399 Euro. (Google says that's 539.0091 U.S. dollars, but bear in mind that prices are _including_ a rather large VAT here, so maybe you can get the same cheaper in the USA.)
Subtract the typical 20% VAT in Europe and add a 7% VAT typical of the United States, and $480 or so still doesn't leave a lot of room for a monitor and the required second copy of a bunch of games.
Not really, because indie gaming is possible on Linux, and Linux doesn't only run on PCs.
A lot of devices sold to home users that run Linux have no display beyond a couple LEDs, such as a router. Set-top devices that run Linux tend to be Tivoized, meaning they run only binaries that have been digitally signed by the adversary, making them not much different from a major video game console and definitely incompatible with GPLv3 apps and LGPLv3 libraries. The rest are either PCs (such as ASUS Eee PC or Dell's N series) or phones (such as T-Mobile G1), as I already mentioned. What kinds of devices were you thinking of?
It does the Wiimote's job, only better. The problem is that it's being marketed toward the PC, where it won't sell because developers won't support it. The only games it'll work well on are low-budget titles or console ports where you can control the entire game with just the remote. The worst part is that once this (decent) product gets patented, we won't see the technology again for 10 years after its initial failure.
If this works on Linux than I would want one. I have bought a Wiimote for my desktop but it is far from precise and just works like shit.
In order for these kind of controllers, or any other new controller for that matter, to be usable and adopted in games we would need a new kind of API that can integrate in games.
This input API should have the following basics:
-Buttons (for remotes, controllers and keyboard)
-Fixed directions with limited range (for example unlimited amount of x and y axises for analog sticks and joysticks)
-Fixed directions with continuous/unlimited range (like x, y and z axis (x and y for the mouse and x, y and z for Wii-like controllers))
Only then would game designers and developers be able to use this kind of technology.
Here be signatures
Thats nice,
We have been doing exactly this in our lab at the University since 2005 with magnetic fields and have the publications to prove it.
We have been using and developing our system for rehabilitation since the Wii and even that controller cannot be used properly for that purpose. Yes I've seen them in hospitals but they only have limited use.
They are of no use when it comes to fine movement rehabilitation.
When did these guys file their patent?
One of the most successful indie games of 2008, Braid, was sold via XBox Live.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
But can I run indie games on a PS3 or Wii without exploiting bugs in the OS to get unsigned code to run?
Not sure what you're trying to get at here. You can install games from your disc onto some consoles now. Some games see performance improvements, some do not. No, maybe you can't run all indie games on your PS3 or Wii, but you may not be able to do that on your PC either.
Say I wanted to run Tux Racer or Frozen Bubble or StepMania or Lockjaw on a Wii console. I couldn't even begin to port it because the console verifies the cryptographic digital signature of all software running on it, and Nintendo doesn't make signing keys available to developers below a certain size. This blocks 1. free software and 2. proprietary software developed by a microISV. But in order to grow, the microISV has to publish a first title somehow, and it would appear that the only platform available to startup companies is either a PC running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, or a mobile phone.
If you enjoy local multiplayer, sure, the console would probably be the way to go.
What should I do if I enjoy local multiplayer but also enjoy mods?
And believe it or not, some PC games do allow you to do local multiplayer on the same PC.
As I see it, the niche of HTPC gaming has been underserved. True, I could use MAME, Serious Sam, or Madden NFL. But have you any recommendations of games to try, other than emulators of questionably legal ROMs, M-rated titles, or EA sport sims?
remember though, if you want to do local multiplayer with a console, it allows only up to four people.
But four is much greater than one, and it's rare that more than four people want to play the same game at once. When I host the game room at my extended family's annual party, I typically bring two TVs, two consoles, and eight controllers, and I imagine a lot of families have the same needs as I.
Even if the hardware turns out to be superior, that doesn't translate into success. For this thing to succeed, it needs lots of users buying it and lots of top-notch games requiring it or at least using its features. Bundling it with one game isn't going to cut it. Why do we hear about this this way, instead of Sony announcing future PS3's will feature these controllers (and current PS3's will work with them) ?
It will fail.
The best way to get market penetration would be to go with making it a console controller.
Looking at the video, the guy has problems with a simple bat-and-ball game. Why? No depth perception. The Wiimote's inaccuracy is in line with the inaccuracy in player perception. Unfortunately, the guy playing this is interacting with a word that he can't fully perceive.
This device will be great -- once they integrate it with stereoscopic video.
HAL