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Sony Rumored To Be Debuting Wiimote-Like Controller At E3
Anenome writes "Previously, we saw a Microsoft patent on a Wiimote-like device, and now rumors say that Sony too has a similar device in the works. This isn't surprising, given how dominant Nintendo's Wii has proved to be in this hardware generation. However, many gaming-geeks continue to lament the move away from plain old button-pressing. What is exciting is the prospect that all three companies may incorporate Johnny Lee-style head-tracking into the next console generation, which achieves a convincing 3D illusion on a regular vid-screen, leaving us just a few steps away from true positional 3D. Both the Microsoft and Sony patents incorporate a camera looking at the user, a required setup for achieving positional head-tracking."
we went from very simple digital joysticks, to analog joysticks, to analog pressure buttons, and now to multi-axis 3D input. i love it. it's what i've been wishing for since i was a kid.
analog steering wheels probably represent the need perfectly. [well, at least in the racing games that lean to the simulation side as opposed to the arcade side....]
i hope all the next-gen continue to get more nuanced inputs!
I can imagine, the next generation of 3D shooting games!!. Almost Virtual Reality.
the problem would be "Almost Virtual Reality Shooting Games" vs "Almost Surreal Shooting Raids"
could your classmates perceive the difference?.
They should really use this to mix style with innovation by putting the head controller into pimped out fur top hats or whatever is marketable. Game specific head controllers would be cool, like mock night vision goggles for fps games, football helmet for the next John madden game etc.
Nintendo fans will be bashing Sony for "once again copying" Nintendo soon enough. Also it wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo is secretly working on a better motion sensing technology themselves.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
The next logical step would be a controller that you can actually wear on your hand like a large glove. It would be so bad!
I know if nintendo can hit once, I can hit twice
I hit the baddest chicks
Shorty don't believe me, then come with me tonight
And I'll show you maaagic
(What? What?) Maaagic
I got the magic stick
e a camera looking at the user, a required setup for achieving positional head-tracking
Sure it's one setup, but it's hardly "required" otherwise it wouldn't have been possible to do the same trick with the wii-mote.
Besides, what happens if your identical twin brother walks over next to you? Did they think of that? No, they clearly did not. Am I truly concerned? No, I don't have a twin. Do I like speaking in questions today? Yes, I do.
which is totally what she said
Shouldn't these camera based controllers have at least two cameras working together, so that they can triangulate 3D positions?
whichever internal security agency decides this is a great way to "monitor" their citizens. How difficult would it be for such an agency to establish a remote connection to the box in question (PS3, Wii or Xbox) turn on the camera and record away "just in case" somehting nefarious is happening in the household. I should imagine that it would not be excessively difficult to establish this without adversly affecting the operation of the console. How much horse power does it take to send a VGA res 1-2 fps video over the net. Scary thought... or paranoia?
I use the Wiimote all the time with Smoothboard, which incidentally is a much MUCH better application than Johny Lee's.
But really, the Wiimote's BT implementation sucks pond water from the bottom: you need to use the BlueSoleil stack, which is $$$ and can be quirky, unless you're really lucky and your Broadcomm or Toshiba stack works as-is, and the Wiimote doesn't autoconnect.
Quite frankly, all the Wiimote needs is a small firmware fix to be perfect. No need for Microsoft to reinvent things, just make it compatible.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
or is even the camera in the diagram staring at the ladies tits
... then you asked the wrong question.
Isn't it weird that you can describe a device as "Wiimote-like", but you can still patent it?
Stop me if I'm being stupid, but isn't Track IR a really good implementation of this? As I understand it, I'm doing this using TrackIR with 6 degrees of freedom.
Why is it that no-one seems to remember the fabulous TrackIR (http://naturalpoint.com/trackir/) when discussing Johnny Lee's headtracking gizmo? Is there any reason why this tried and true device couldn't or shouldn't be used in this application?
Shouldn't a debut include something new?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Minidisc Player
Betamax Player
Playstation 3
Sony Laserdisc
Can't wait!
I guess you never had a power glove... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
walkman
3.5' floppy disk
CD
blu-ray
blu-ray
jury is still out on that one. it's done better than laser disc.
but its still hasn't done better than betamax (sure it killed hddvd..but I remember when video stores were almost 50/50 beta/vhs and beta still lost.
And in my opinion blu-ray's real competition is DVD. Sure bluray has the quality advantage... but then so did betamax... dvd's are cheap, well established, and look equally good on most people's tv's at the viewing distances most people watch tv at.
bluray penetration and marketshare is expanding... but it hasn't reached critical mass yet, and it might well die out, replaced by the next big thing, before it does.
blurays biggest issues, in my mind, is that they aren't backwards compatible, and they aren't better than DVD to anywhere near the same degree that DVD was better than VHS.
I know so many people who find bluray more annoying than anything.. great when it works... but because they only have one bluray player they can only watch it in their living room... it doesn't work in their laptop, their portable dvd player, their dvd player at the cabin, the tv in the bedroom, and they can't bring it over and watch it at a friends house (assuming they don't have bluray), etc.
Woosh! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove#In_popular_culture
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
I think he meant a version that works.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... is the added complexity proposed to operate the gaming console. At first one button was fine, then two buttons, six, twelve ... now my wireless Logitech controller has no less than 18 buttons on it, two analog sticks, and a d-pad.
The beautiful thing about the Wii is that while it's not as fast or responsive as simply pressing a button to do X, it helps alleviate the complexity of modern gaming. My dad -- who couldn't figure out how to play golf on the Xbox because of all the different button combinations -- had no problems playing golf on the Wii (he still has a hard time with, and has basically given up on, 3D gaming -- so 3D Zelda and Mario are right out for him).
But now Microsoft and Sony continue to take the elegant design of the Wii controller (relative to the other gaming controllers, mind you) and add a whole bunch of shit to it to make it "better"
Technologically, it might be better, but god damn, they are missing the point: it's not the motion controls that gave Nintendo the damn lead, it's the ease of operation that opened the console up to less than hardcore gamers.
When my dad has to strap on a helmet just to play these games, he's going to junk the console, open his laptop, and play TextTwist into the night ... and I can't blame him.
Sony Laserdisc
Actually, Sony had very little to do with the laserdisc format. They came out with some lame players (actually, any player but a post-digital-audio Pioneer or a high-priced Home Theatre brand player was lame), and they manufactured discs. Oh wait. Carry on.
But as it wasn't a Holy Sony Format, naturally they wouldn't care if their quality was crap.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
You missed a few. We went from all buttons to rotary knobs to digital joysticks to analog joysticks to digital gamepads to digital gamepads with an analog option to analog gamepads with a digital option to motion sensing nunchuck with IR pointer attached back to analog gamepad with a digital option but with rudimentary motion sensing tacked on to whatever Sony is putting out now.
It will be $200.
What an idiot. He thinks the Playstation3 is not a success. 22m consoles sold in less time that the Xbox360 took to get there.
That must therefore mean the Xbox is an even bigger flop (looking at the lack of quality, and last-gen hardware, I think we already knew that).
Let me just to give you (and all the clueless American idiots that believe everything Microsoft tells you) some facts...
22m PS3's in 30 months (26 in Europe) = 900,000 a month globally on average (calculated by splitting the 4 month release date gap)
28m 360's in 42 months = 660,000 a month globally on average.
You need to watch the size of blu-ray shelf space. In the last 18 months or so I've seen it go from racks 3 wide, to 5 wide, to 2 of 6 wide, to an entire isle, and that's in my local Target. blu-ray now has about 15% of the DVD area, which is pretty surprising considering the huge price Target keep titles at.
As people dump their old CRTs and back projection units, they'll start to want more HD. TVs are coming with blu-ray player built in, my last laptop came with a blu-ray drive too, so there's no reason not to suspect blu-ray sales will keep increasing for a few years yet. You must be living on old tech, just about everything is coming with media playback abilities working on your home LAN, the blu-ray chips devices use are basic linux systems with a huge amount of functionality. You don't need a player per screen.
DVDs are also being crapped up with lower bitrate. Rip a movie and you'll see what I mean. Loads of space available these days. It never used to be as obvious. I can only speculate the publishers are doing this to increase the difference between DVD and blu-ray.
Downloadable decent HD content is a long way off. Think of the storage you need, think how ISPs are capping and throttling bandwidth. Until the networking and storage is better, people aren't going to want to have their video libraries at their mercy.
Urm, Sony didn't invent laserdiscs. But you might want to put 3.5" floppy disks and audio CDs on that list.
Subject says it all. There's a camera, there's a target. It's the Eyetoy, with a target. The eyetoy was lame because the PS2 only had enough processing power for simple games when doing the image processing. This ought to be less lame, but I still won't have one because there's not enough room for a PS3 in my living room, and besides, I already have a George Foreman grill.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So how much money is lost per console versus how much is gained per license and per sale?
If there's any indication that the Playstation 3 is still a money sinkhole for Sony it's their continued refusal to lower the console price, despite being outsold by its last generation counterpart. It means that the PS3 still costs a lot to manufacture, Sony is still taking a loss on the console, and lowering the price would put their charts into all kinds of unpredictable hell.
The declared goal of the Playstation 3 was to shim Blu-Ray into the average consumers home. At 22m units sold worldwide, it has helped Blu-Ray ... but it accounts for almost 90% of all the BD-enabled devices in the home around the world. With DVD being the near-ubiquitous media of choice around the world -- it has market penetration of almost 99% -- BD has a long damn way to go.
Also, the Wii and Xbox 360 continue to outperform the PS3 in the market, with 50m and 30m sold, compared to PS3's 22m.
So, yes, I'd say the Playstation 3 has been a marketing and performance failure. It was supposed to ride the success of the Playstation 2 and usher in the Blu-Ray era. It has not.
It'll be half as good, cost twice as much, come with a rootkit and won't connect to the InterWeb because, you know, it's full of pirates.
with their failed ps3 product, and their loudmouth CEO and their draconian content policies, who isnt completely over sony?
They're using their grammar skills there.
Honestly, I like the Wiimote. I like the feel of it, I like the gimmicks it can us. I don't like that every game is forcing the player to use movement or aiming. I'm not terribly happy it's in the PS3 six-axis either. Ultimately that's why I bought an Xbox360.
I'm happy with both consoles and each one excels for what I bought it for.
What's wrong with the PS3? Most people would regard the 360 as a successful product, and the PS3 is selling at the same average rate of ~700,000 units per month. The 360 leads it in total sales due to its earlier release date, not by selling more.
Average sales are irrelevant the total number of units are what matters to developers (along with the console parameters)
More Console=More Games to sell=More Profit
Just look at the new Final Fantasy for proof.
The Wii doesn't follow this rule but thats because most of it's games are shitty ports, I'm not bashing it has some great games but the ratio of Crap:Good games is around 20:1 at the moment.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
The next logical step would be a controller that you can actually wear on your hand like a large glove. It would be so bad!
Just keep your power gloves off my gaming system, pal, ok?
Rootkits, the PS3, and now this?
Ezekiel 23:20
" However, many gaming-geeks continue to lament the move away from plain old button-pressing." ...because it's sooo intuitive to press triangle-circle-square-square-circle-cross to execute an overhand attack
Blu-ray isn't backwards-compatible in the sense that you can pop one of the discs into an old player, but no mew media format is like that, reprogrammable (PC) stuff aside.
It is, however, backwards-compatible to a greater extent than, say, DVD, as you can take a bit of media from the last generation (a standard DVD) and pop it into a Blu-Ray player and it'll work fine. Trust me, trying to stuff a VHS tape into a dvd slot is a pain by comparison.
Anyhow, I think that people buying new playback hardware are buying blu-ray (because why not? it still plays DVD), there's just no rush to upgrade their existing libraries or their working players. Speed of replacement is slower than speed of "shiny new thing", but it'll take over eventually.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Wow. First off... how sad to be a loyal supporter of a corporate entity.
Secondly; the PS3 is at 22mil wordwide sales, compared to 30 mil for the 360, and about 50 mill for the Wii. In the US, the situation is worse; about 8.5 mil PS3, compared to about 17 mill 360s.
The PS3 has rebounded, to an extent. Eighteen months ago it looked like it would be an embarrassing failure for Sony; now, it is at least competitive. It will probably never catch up with 360 sales wordwide; it certainly will never catch up in the US. That is a HUGE failure for a company that was the undisputed leader of the last two console generations; although Sony execs like to blather on about how they are still the market leader (keeping fanboys like you happy), there is no doubt they are tremendously disappointed how this gen turned out.
The blessing is, that when Sony announces their next console, it might be significantly better. The occasional failure tends to put a company back on the right track. (By better, I don't mean more powerful; nobody complains the PS3 isn't powerful enough. I mean with a price point and features that consumers want, and a renewed focus on actual games.)
the word 'wiimote' is just like the word 'fucktard' and 'sheeple'. how can you hate the former but love the latter?
sig? uhh, umm, ok
The success of the Wii among current generation of console isn't *directly due* to the Wiimote.
Adding a Wiimote-like peripheral to the next generation of consoles by Sony and Microsoft won't automagically replicate Nintendo's success.
The main success of the Wii is due to Nitendo policy and shift of focus.
The other consoles makers decided to design the current crop of console as "the same as before but with all graphic/processing power turned up to eleven ! Hardcore gamers will like it 'cause we'll make even more bad-ass games !!!"
Instead of competing on the same playfield, Nintendo decided to change their focus and target a broader audience, people who weren't gamers before. They got success because they target the other family members, when the concurrent where only targeting the male 20-30y.o. hardcore gamer. ...)
They succeeded because, when the other companies were churning "Medal of Vietnam hill #364 - Episode XII - this time with even more realistic rain", they were dragging inspiration from casual gaming, or games inspired from usually non-gaming topics liked by the new target audience (yoga, actually doing sports,
Granted, lots of these games benefited from motion input sensors. But the Wiimote is a result of the need of the new type of games which helped Nintendo attract a new market. It's not the Wiimote in itself wich provoked the success.
Slapping a motion detector in the next production of peripheral won't alone help Microsoft and Sony. What they need is also to broaden their focus of games to a much larger audience than the traditional hardcore gamers. To concentrate additional effort on casual gaming and such.
The down-loadable content channels (such as X-Box Live Arcade) might be a good starting point.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
All well and good, but I'll lament the loss of ability to watch someone else play, which can be fun in its own right (and is essential in a large family with only one console!). With head tracking, the visuals don't make much sense unless you're the person playing the game..
Didn't executives of the game divisions of both Microsoft and Sony out right dismiss the Wii-mote concept as a silly gimmick?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
In North America, you may be right, mostly due to a lot of media bias toward the 360 due to everyone forgetting how few games it had when it came out too.
In the rest of the world, your stats are way off and you might want to look them up.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
LOL
and i wax nostalgic over the eight-bit NES light gun... Duck Hunt!!!
Blu-ray isn't backwards-compatible in the sense that you can pop one of the discs into an old player, but no mew media format is like that, reprogrammable (PC) stuff aside.
Fair comment.
It is, however, backwards-compatible to a greater extent than, say, DVD, as you can take a bit of media from the last generation (a standard DVD) and pop it into a Blu-Ray player and it'll work fine.
On the other hand, you can't even media shift to go the other way, and while perhaps you never really could before; it didn't matter because most of us only watched movies on our TV anyway when we started adopting DVDs. But the world is different now, today if I buy a CD, I expect to use it in a whole bunch of devices, and to rip it to use in a whole bunch more. Similiarly If I buy a blu-ray disc today, I expect to be able to rip it to my ipod or to DVD for my portable dvd player or laptop or whatever...
Anyhow, I think that people buying new playback hardware are buying blu-ray (because why not? it still plays DVD), there's just no rush to upgrade their existing libraries or their working players.
I'm not even seeing that yet. Why drop $200+ on a bluray player when a DVD player is $50? But yeah, I agree that as the price of players drops inevitably people will switch.
Speed of replacement is slower than speed of "shiny new thing", but it'll take over eventually.
And that's where I'm skeptical. Speed of replacement is slow enough that "shiny new thing" might actually arrive before bluray reaches critical mass.