I think all the folks here pissing on the trees are failing to notice the forest. This thing is the console version of a
mouse and keyboard. Except that it's potentially better than a mouse, because it senses movement in three dimensions. And tilts. This picture:
...screams "first-person shooter." Analog thumbsticks are a crappy controller for FPS games. They always have been, and they always will be. I can totally imagine how one might "mouselook" by moving the remote on the right, while using the left analog stick to move. There's also a pair of triggers on the underside of those pieces (primary and alt fire), and the D-pad on the remote could do weapon and item selects. If this this is responsive enough--and I'm not saying that it is, because I don't know--but IF it is, the Revolution could be
the system for first-person shooters. That's pretty huge.
Ditto for driving games. Imagine steering just by turning the controller in space, like a steering wheel. As with FPS games, an analog stick is a poor man's steering wheel. Devs have gotten good at designing games to work with them, but this could potentially be a hell of a lot more precise.
How about cursor-driven games? Can you put a cursor on the screen and drag it around with that thing? I dunno, but if you can, then you have the first console that's a viable platform for real-time strategy games.
Imagine a version of Ossu! Tatakae! Ouendan! where you play standing up, and pantomime the routine instead of tapping a screen.
I think a lot of folks are writing this thing off too quickly. Yeah, it's weird. Really weird. And it's not well-suited to current control conventions. But put that aside for a moment and think of the shit that you could possibly do with such a control--stuff that would never fly with a gamepad.
A lot depends on how precise and responsive the thing is. If it works well, though...
Inumaru said:
My arm is going to get tired holding that up in "3D space". I'm too lazy for this controller.
Who says that you have to hold it up in the air? I hold my gamepad with my arms resting on my knees, when I'm sitting on the couch. I don't see why that wouldn't work with this. It senses movement relative to its own position in space. You can probably put your arms wherever you want while using it.
mattx5 said:
You hear that?
That's the sound of Nintendo fucking themselves on multi-platform releases.
They may be. I'm taking a wild guess here, but I wonder if they care? Maybe the lesson they took from this generation is that they aren't going to hold their own by begging for sloppy second ports from other consoles. Multi-platform games don't sell systems, exclusives do. And you need to give devs a reason to do an exclusive game on your system. A unique controller is a pretty good incentive, if the controller works well. This one has the advantage, potentially, of being more suitable than a gamepad for some very popular genres (like FPS), as well as opening the door for all sorts of the crazy oddball shit that Nintendo likes to do.
I say "wow."