New Nintendo controller

Nintendo's Revolution Controller revealed: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3143782

Q: "what do you gamers think?"

A: I am surprised, that's for sure. But if you look at it as part of a trend toward more physically-intensive console games, I think it makes sense.

I was at a SIGGRAPH panel this year about the Future (!) of Game Interaction (!) (FUTURE! Future! future! . . . ). Most of the panelists were game reps with toys to show off. Nobody showed anything like the Nintendo thing, of course. But they did spend a lot of time on that dance mat wingding, and talked about how popular it is with the kids -- not a niche, as you might have thought, but a big hit in the game market.

So now there's a microphone that plugs into the console, and you can do karaoke with a live pitch detector that awards you points, based on how on-key you are. So they're pretty excited about that. And yes, there's a version of the dancing game that combined the two modes -- you have to sing and dance at the same time. One of the panelists at SIGGRAPH gave it a try for us.

But wait, there's more. Apparently the eyeToy (or whatever they're calling the little set-top camera/vision software) is also somewhat popular (another surprise to cynical me, who expected it to go the way of the glove or the VR headset). As far as I can tell, its ability to detect hand position in midair, as well as body or head leaning, is fairly robust. So you can lean in motorcycle games, for example. Or, in another twist on the dance mat/karaoke game, you can sing, dance, AND put your hands in the air so as to hit little virtual targets in time with the music. Again, a thirty-five year old white man tried this in front of a thousand people. He was really not too bad, considering he was trying to follow a Stevie Wonder scat line bend for bend AND throw his one free hand in the like he just didn't care. I have visions of of Embarassing Community Meeting Activities To Come (FUTURE! Future! future! . . . )

They didn't mention this explicitly, but I gather that these kinds of physicalized, even literalized, games, and these kinds of interactions (read the article for examples), are inclusive of, and appealing to, young females, so they represent a means of greatly expanding the traditional market base for game consoles. Not simply because there's dancing involved, and 12 year-old girls are more likely to dance than 12-year old boys, which may be true . . . but rather, the direct physical actions involved seem to be part of what lowers a barrier that has always separated boy gamers and their boy toys from a wider public. I think it would be an interesting anthropological study that delved into just WHY that might be and how it might work, but the fact that it's somehow true shows through in Nintendo's thinking about this new device. Look how they mention the emotion of fear twice, and gender twice, in the following quote:

"We want a system that takes advantage of new technology for something that anyone, regardless of age or gender, can pick up and play. [Something with a] gameplay style that people who have never played games can pick up and not be intimidated by. We wanted a controller that somebody's mother will look at and not be afraid of."

What I DON'T like about this set of developments -- dancepad, microphone, eyeToy, Nintendo remote, and other physicalize interface modalities I haven't talked about -- is that they push the boot down even harder on the kinds of cogitative games I actually like: Zork, Myst, SimCity, even Warcraft. At least in the console world. I would like to play those games in my living room, with the benefit of the latest console technology, and a cool controller well-designed for the task, but alas.