The future of the Wii

[Overread]

If they ever use this tech, then the wii will win the console wars hands down!
Infact it might even rear its head high enough to smash out FPS on PCs!

YouTube - Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote

[Cayal]

Won't win if it sucks, but it looks good.

[ice.monkey]

Okay, games using that head tracking would be seriously cool. They've got to use it - surely?

[Green]

This looked seriously cool. I would love to play a (good) FPS game with this feature. In fact, I think almost any game would work well with this, if done properly. Games like Total War and others with "3D" cameras would look beautiful.

Off topic, though...

I was thinking about the Wii the other day, and how Nintendo have really dropped the ball this Christmas by not supplying to meet demand.

Obviously I'm not the first person to point this out, but it seems to me they've given themselves a big kick in the pants over it. If people can't get what they want, then those that have it begin to sell it at an inflated price. Units on ebay are going for more than £200, and even on the classified ads at our work, people are looking to make a hefty bit of cash.

So Nintendo are losing sales of consoles through the sell-on. They're also losing sales on games, because there's one consumer who no longer has a Wii (I'm assuming the one who bought it would have bought it anyway, just later, and the old owner isn't buying another one). They also probably lose game sales from the new owner, because they had to buy at an inflated price and they can't afford to splash out more on games and peripherals.

Nobody wins in this situation, except those "lucky" enough to have purchased back in March, or whenever.

[Joel007]

I think Nintendo never expected the Wii to do this well I had to buy a Wii as a package deal just to find one, but fortunately it was before the prices skyrocketed.
I also think that the next console from them will refine and improve into yet another awesome breakthrough

[pyan]

Apparently the demand has so outstripped Nintendo's capacity to make the things, they were planning to pull the TV advertising campaign.....

PS3NEWS

And more bad news for Wii-lovers.....

Playing sport with Wii won't burn off the fat, says study

[Commonmind]

I think the study is rather moot. It's not the idea of burning fat by using the Wii that's helping folks loose weight, it's getting people more involved in the experience and teaching them that being active can also be fun.

[Cayal]

lol, real sports and Wii sports are not even comparable.

[Simple Simon]

I view gaming as a substitute to flaking out in front of the telly or something to do when I'm not reading. It's part of my lazy activities, all this jumping around with the wii is anathema to me.

I have to say that head tracking stuff is pretty groovy though.

[Lenny]

It is rather good. But it's not going to win the Wii the console war - all three consoles have wireless controllers. Which means that all three consoles would be able to use the technology (albeit with modifications. I don't know what the 360 controllers use, but to get it to work with the PS3, it either needs an IR receiver plug in, or for the head-tracking system to be modified to use Bluetooth instead).

[Commonmind]

Originally Posted by Jaire

lol, real sports and Wii sports are not even comparable.

If this is a reply to my comment, I didn't mean to say that they were, only that playing a game like Wii Sports may inspire someone to get off their behinds and do the real thing. I know from personal experience, as I played my first round of Golf in four years after having played Wii Sport's Golf.

[Lenny]

This was only December?! Damn, my body calendar is messed up. I thought it was a lot older than December.

Anyway, the exact technology that allowed the Wii to do the head-tracking is now on the PS3, except this time it uses the PSEye (the second generation EyeToy - vastly improved, with a much better camera and microphone) to track eye- and face movement to change the perspective, rather than a pair of goggles with the tracker as the person in the original Wii video did.

Vil dette gi større realisme i spill? - spill - Dagbladet.no

I'll be safe with the guess that that is from GDC last week. The video also shows a program created for fun by a single fellow in Sony America's R&D department, which also uses the PSEye, and a lot of clever programming. If people like the look of it, I'll put it in a new thread.