[Robo]

OMG! It's even more insane than I thought it would be.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651301p1.html

[Brad]

That looks... painful to use.

[Kickaha]

Are you kidding? I LOVE it. Love, love, love.

Then again, I despise console controllers in general. NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, XBox... hate 'em all. Period.

This might knock some heads into thinking outside the box again. I love it.

[Robo]

It's official: the Nintendo Revolution is not a game console.

It's as hard to describe how I feel about the controller as it is to describe the controller itself. It's very unique, but it seems intuitive, and I can think of lots of cool new types of games that could be made using it. On the other hand, it will alienate developers more than I had even imagined, because few old types of games could be made to use it.

I love the design of the controller...I'm just not sure if I'm sold on the idea quite yet.

Being a Nintendo fan is a lesson in frusteration. I want to see them on top of the gaming world again, but it seems like they've basically given up on competing. They're happy being the Sprite to the XB360 Pepsi and the PS3 Coke. And while I'm glad they're trying to be different, it can be frusterating, since Nintendo's hasn't just stopped trying to top the console world; they're trying to leave it.

I'll buy Nintendo's "Unconsole" on Day 1. But I like the types of games I play now, and I'll miss the days when Nintendo made them.

[alcimedes]

Holy balls. They might have actually lived up to the hype. That could totally rock if they do it right.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by alcimedes Holy balls. They might have actually lived up to the hype. That could totally rock if they do it right.

That's exactly how I feel.

I would have been perfectly content if they just took a traditional controller and used a large touchscreen instead of action buttons. That would have been "revolutionary" enough, right? Not for Nintendo. They reinvented the very idea of a game controller, to the point where calling it a "controller" doesn't seem right. Whether you love it or hate it, you have to give them props for being able to think that far outside the box and more than deliver on their promises.

I agree that it could totally rock if they do it right. Let's hope Nintendo does it right...

[torifile]

Nintendo seems like such a cool company. I know nothing about them other than the fact that they are at least trying to push the envelope with creativity rather than brute force. I've got a DS and it's fantastic. It's so incredibly creative. I love it. The revolution looks like it'll be the same. Those quirky Japanese. Gotta love 'em.

[Robo]

Yeah, Nintendo is truly the Apple of the games industry, and I'm not saying that just because the Revolution is showing quite Apple-ish design.

Like Apple, I wish Nintendo could be truly mainstream, but I'm content on playing games off in Nintendo's world. It's a nice world.

[The Return of the 'nut]

there doesn't seem to be any usable buttons beside the A button. Motion detection whatever, how would it work without any buttons?

And how useful is motion if you are binded by the short cable the analog stick is attached by

[Kickaha]

B button on the bottom side, trigger position.

I like the analog as a separate piece. Lefties can swap them without any penalty.

[Robo]

There is a "B" trigger button on the underside of the controller.

The standard joystick attatchment adds Z1 and Z2 shoulder buttons.

And on some prototypes of the console, the lowercase "a" and "b" buttons on the bottom of the face were labeled "X" and "Y", which suggests that they don't just mirror the capital "A" and "B" buttons. Obviously, their position would regulate them to secondary functions.

No, the Revolution controller doesn't have as many buttons as the DualShock or the XB360 pad, but it's not supposed to.

[The Return of the 'nut]

Originally Posted by Roboman There is a "B" trigger button on the underside of the controller. The standard joystick attatchment adds Z1 and Z2 shoulder buttons. And on some prototypes of the console, the lowercase "a" and "b" buttons on the bottom of the face were labeled "X" and "Y", which suggests that they don't just mirror the capital "A" and "B" buttons. Obviously, their position would regulate them to secondary functions. No, the Revolution controller doesn't have as many buttons as the DualShock or the XB360 pad, but it's not supposed to.

well, please explain to me how I would play a baseball game with this controller then.

[Kickaha]

Well that would kind of depend on how you wanted to use the tilt and motion sensors in addition to the A, B, a, and b buttons.

How do you play a baseball game *now*?

[Luca]

Yeah, true to its name this seems like it's going to truly be a *revolution*. By the time Nintendo's through with you, applenut, you won't be thinking the same way anymore. The Revolution controller will redefine the way you play console games, further set consoles apart from computers, and make current consoles (and that includes the XBox 360 and PS3) look archaic by comparison.

That or it'll be Virtual Boy v. 2, in which case Nintendo may be forced to bow out of the home console market for a while, or forever.

But I like this approach. Whether it succeeds or fails, this shows that Nintendo is focusing on the gameplay instead of the graphics, which is absolutely the way to go. The next generation consoles from MS and Sony aren't even that impressive graphics-wise, at least not enough to possibly live up to their hype.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by The Return of the 'nut well, please explain to me how I would play a baseball game with this controller then.

I think it's ironic that you picked one of the most obvious examples for showing off the Revolution controller's strengths.

You'd actually be able to swing the controller like a bat to hit the ball. You'd be able use the motion detection to aim your pitch, too (even twist the controller for a curveball!), and press A or whatever to pitch.

In fact, baseball on the Revolution will be awesome.

[rasmits]

Super Smash Bros. is going to have to make a serious change.

But, after seeing this, I might just want to get a Rev.

[scratt]

I don't want to piss on Nintendos fire but I don't think it will make it as a game controller...

It's going to be based on a tracking system which has been cut down for a home entertainment system..

Back along I worked with Polhemus trackers for Virtual Reality, which were effectively a PC motherboard in their own right with very expensive megnetic tracking systems atteched to it. At the same time we were using them so was Nasa. We could track a head and hand tracker with 3 axis of rotation and a very small area of physical motion.

Even with these incredibly expensive systems which we put only in high end VR units there were tracking glitches, interference, and lag on the feedback of about 2 frames. The read cycle, calculation cycle and then feeding the information to the 3D rendering system, all colluded to make this happen. It was one of the reasons that VR in home entertainment has not yet happened, and in high end entertainment is still stalled, and VR remains an expensive corporate solution only.

I suspect in the home environment this will be about as effective as bluetooth mice are on Macs when you use Airport Extreme full blast....

[rasmits]

Originally Posted by scratt I suspect in the home environment this will be about as effective as bluetooth mice are on Macs when you use Airport Extreme full blast....

Is that a problem? I'm doing it right now.

[Kickaha]

scratt, ditto on the Polhemus trackers. I got a chance to work with them at UNC, and in commercial and military systems in industry.

Active optical tracking turned out to be a couple orders of magnitude more accurate: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~tracker/ It also effectively eliminates the majority of the problems caused by environmental interference.

[Kickaha]

Rev controller video: http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/6...34/vids_1.html

[scratt]

Originally Posted by rasmits Is that a problem? I'm doing it right now.

It may just be the position of all my gear but if I am transferring a lot of data my pointer becomes quite jittery when moving around the screen.

[scratt]

Engadget seem to have some similar concerns...

This prompts some concern over how the controller is going to stack up in FPS-type games due to the inherently slower response time of a wireless versus a wired controller.

linky

[Wrao]

I am excited of all the capabilities this controller seems to have. Ultimately, if the responsiveness isn't great, then it will probably kill it. But, Nintendo has invested a ton of time and money into this thing, so it's probably going to be pretty radical.

[Kickaha]

Heh. Something I didn't notice until someone else pointed it out... turn it 90deg to the left, and it's damned near the original NES controller.

[Wrao]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Heh. Something I didn't notice until someone else pointed it out... turn it 90deg to the left, and it's damned near the original NES controller.

Yea, I thought about the NES controller when I first saw it based on the focus on A and B buttons.

Speaking of which, just how many active buttons ARE there?

A...B... and?

[Kickaha]

Looks like it. D-Pad + A + B... + tilt + motion. The a and b buttons are for when you turn it sideways as an NES controller.

Z1 and Z2 are added when you plug in the analog joystick.

[Eugene]

Not sure I like it, but there's no way to tell if it'll work for me without actually tryiing it. One nice thing about current game controllers is that you can choose shift the weight to either hand. Of course all Nintendo has to do is offer a conventional controller.

[AsLan^]

After watching the video, I'm totally psyched.

I really, really, really, want them to incorporate some kind of stereoscopic glasses into some of their games, or full on VR headsets.

Of course stereoscopic glasses is a lot more cost effective. Did you see in the video where the girl was using the controller like a fly swatter, that's the perfect example of a game that could use stereoscopic glasses.

[scratt]

The same thing that I outlined before applies... The feedback time to display time (not to mention how crude a VR headset at consumer prices would be even today) would lead to what we used to call Virtual Sickness.

Motion does not marry up with what you are doing. Feedback is delayed. It's like playing a game in a pool of water....

Think about the fact that you not only have to track the hand and head, and tie that into any 3D world you are rendering for the eye pieces, in stereo. So two images, unless you go cheap and offset them (urgh!).

Then add in how fast our eyes percieve things and how fast we can actually move our limbs and heads (not to mention our untrackable eyeballs) around....

Headaches for you. Headaches for developers. Headaches for hardware. Headaches. Headaches! etc. etc.

It's a really bad idea, and simply not feasable for consumer electronics today.

I spent 5 years trying to get it to work for Sega (knowing it would not) when they were going to launch the Dreamcast as a home VR unit. They still have production mock-ups of the headsets. But it was ditched as not being feasable.

Even if you do a perfect job, and I mean absolutely flawless, with really fast simple graphics you will still have a frame or so lag. This will always give you a feeling of 'not quite being there' as opposed to 'BEING THERE!'

It will happen in the future... But it wil only be a gimic on any current or next generation system for some years to come.

[AsLan^]

I understand what you're saying about the VR headsets.

From your unique perspective why didn't any of the console makers incoporate stereoscopic glasses ? Like the ones at Disneyland, not the red/blue kind.