The future of games and other interfaces: Motion Detection
Posted
Thu, Jul 12 2007 3:25 PM
by
Mischa Kroon
In my opinion the future of games and other interfaces will be one where motion detection will be a key element.
What we are seeing at the moment is that the Nintendo WII is outselling the competition, why is this?
Well for one it makes for quite a good party machine meaning that a lot of non standard gamers are picking it up to go out and play with it.
I've actually bought one myself a while back and I must say it's quite entertaining to wave your hands and see stuff happening and it's a lot more engaging then hitting keys on your keyboard.
The tapping of a whole new public also means I can occasionally play computer games with for instance my dad, which would definitely stay clear of any other type of active computer games. By that I mean things which require fast responses and the like.
It means that the playing field is leveled for the first time in a while, because everyone can make natural movements to do stuff.
This means a revolution in gaming, people will love the new thing, the hardcore gamers because of the newness of it, everyone else for the leveled playing field and the rewarding experience. The whole thing isn't limited to motion sensing controllers but can also be done by webcam.
A very high percentage of laptops for instance are shipped with a webcam at the moment which means that the webcam has more penetration now than it used to have :)
I think that the penetration will be around 30% amongst students / IT enthusiasts etc it will be even higher.
Everything is pointing to this fact, the WII is the revolution and everything else will probably be more evolutionary, the WII controller is already usable on PC's through a .Net library and a C++ library. There are also some applications out there using this controller like a WII mote drum kit and a few other applications, there will probably be more and more out there soon.
For webcams there is now a bit of support for flash which should mean that there will be quite a few games popping up using that in a while.
After that there will probably be a surge in applications using the motion detection theme from the webcams to do other things.
Time will tell what all the applications for these newly mainstreamed technologies will be.
PS. There is also a lot going on with multi touch interfaces like Microsoft Surface.
This also has a lot of promise but, I like the odds of motion sencing better.
What do you think ?