Failed Controller-Free Gaming Devices of the Past 135
adeelarshad82 writes "While Microsoft does get points for innovation, Kinect for Xbox 360 isn't the first attempt to make gaming a hands-free affair. Decades before Microsoft would release its depth-sensing camera system, other companies tried to take the gamepad out of the gaming equation. PlayStation, Dreamcast, NES and Sega have all been there. These attempts varied in usefulness, ranging from somewhat functional to laughable and pointless, and from the forgettable to the downright infamous."
The real question: (Score:4, Interesting)
People envision that Kinect will be used for sign language recognition and creating custom animations/taunts (actually waving bye to that Pyro wanker's head).
Will we ever see a developer use the hardware? Or will they just use it shallowly and default to what they know for anything of substance?
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IIRC, the Kinect's depth camera doesn't have enough resolution to distinguish between fingers. Having a better camera would have made the unit too expensive.
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Re:The real question: (Score:5, Interesting)
developers still don't know how to properly use the hardware.
Indeed!
This really is the problem. I think this looks like a very interesting and powerful piece of technology.. but if it only ever gets used to make a bunch of wii style "minigames", what's the point!
There will probably be a whole collection of Kinect minigames which though fun will not provide any real substance, and a handful of "real" games with Kinect support thrown in (but not required) for a little novelty. I'm not holding my breath for any serious titles appearing which really use Kinect to provide fundamental unique gameplay.
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Until recently, I was working at a company that had come up with a demo of something very interesting to do with the Kinect.
Of course, when I left, the project had been shelved because no one was willing to put up money for anything interesting. The publishers all wanted a normal game with some kind of Kinect minigame glued on as a bonus. No one wanted to stick their head out and make a game which you could only play if you had a Kinect.
That's what will kill it. There won't be any game out there that you *h
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I've been envisioning a variation of standard first/third person shooter game that would be played with the standard controller but have Kinect support for altering the player's view based on their movements.
Can you imagine leaning to one side to look around a wall? Or ducking to get cover? I think something like this is needed to sell this thing to the gamers. Developers need to accentuate the existing controller interface and not try to replace it with flailing.
I only hope that Microsoft brought Johnny [johnnylee.net]
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I was thinking if Microsoft would figure out how to not just concentrate on games, they could have a heads-up on the simulation industry. Perhaps a more advanced version able to recognize fingers (it'll cost way more money), but you could do a lot of i
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Dance Central may be that "must have" game.
Shape may be the "Wii Fit" of Kinect.
New XBoxes are being sold as either Kinect ready or with Kinect.
I think it'll do ok.
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Yes, since millions of self-proclaimed "hardcore" gamers with an XBox are going to be frothing at the mouth for Dance Central. Give me a fucking break. I bet the thing flops because developers will almost exclusively target the casual audience, which the Wii already has under lock, and the casual audience by definition isn't going to care to replace their casual gaming system with another. Don't get me wrong, I think the technology is interesting (albeit without tactile feedback), but it's clear they are
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Well, those "millions of self-proclaimed 'hardcore' gamers with an XBox" did seem to spend money on casual games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, so yeah, I'd say Dance Central could wind up being something pretty big for Kinect.
I have a Wii, a PS3 and an XBox + Kinect - I don't know if I'm "hardcore" but I will say that there's a rather distinct difference between the Wii and the Kinect, for sure. Heck, the first title for Kinect - Kinect Adventures - already does more than the Wii does: whole body immersio
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Guitar Hero and Rock Band are vastly different from Dance Central. My guess is strumming or drumming along to a track is much more preferable to a likely out-of-shape hardcore gamer than is copying an on-screen avatar's dance moves without any tactile feedback whatsoever. I still seriously doubt you'll see hardcore gamers picking this up. Maybe the casual crowd will take a liking to it, but as I already said before, that crowd has a Wii and I doubt they'll be shelling out $300 or whatever it is for a 360
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Anything's possible - personally, I don't really care since I'm having fun with it, and it isn't like they won't make more/better games as people figure out the device :) They're selling enough (Kinetic addons and games) that I'm reasonably sure of this. Add in the ability for indie devs to make stuff soon and I think it'll have a solid library.
With regard to DC, I didn't find the lack of tactile feedback to be that big a deal - it flashes on the bodypart that is not in the proper spot/beat/synch which has
It's that time again, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, that game was not Punch-Out (with or without Mike Tyson). Punch-Out was a massive pile of failure to end all massive piles of failure with regards to the power glove. For some reason some idiot programmer thought that a good way to set up the power glove for punch-out was to move your hand forward for a punch, and then backwards for a power punch. Which of course meant your only power punch was gone pretty well immediately and then you were hosed for the rest of the round.
No, the game that worked well with the power glove (while not being power glove specific) was Top Gun. That game had very sensible controls; move your hand, move the plane. First two fingers are your weapons. You didn't need anything more than that. Unfortunately few people ever used that great combination.
I suppose it is probably a good thing that some of the MS engineers who worked on Kinect are actually too young to have ever tried to play punch-out with a power glove. Because if they had, they might have started out with the idea that motion control without a controller could never work properly.
Re:It's that time again, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the control scheme for punch out was designed solely as a way to advertise the power glove(I remember the power glove commercial prominently featured Punch-Out). What looks really cool in a 30 second ad obviously may wear thin really quickly.
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One controller port (Score:2)
Do none of you remember that 3DO is the company that thought in their ultimate wisdom to be the first to have only 1 input-port on the console that extends to a controller and then that controller has a port for anothe controller to extend onto and ad-infinitum?
Daisy-chaining was by no means exclusive to the 3DO; pre-USB Sidewinder gamepads for PC also used it. But better-engineered platforms used a hub topology:
Original Macbook Air (Score:2)
I have never seen a laptop with only one USB port.
Allow me to introduce you to the Macbook Air [wikipedia.org] which had only one USB port on the original version.
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The old PC game port actually supported only two joysticks and four buttons.
Oops, brain fart. I was thinking of the four axes, which were traditionally placed on two sticks, and I got confused.
I have never seen a laptop with only one USB port.
Acer TravelMate 721TX, distributed in the third and fourth quarters of 1999 to the Class of 2003 at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
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I have never seen a laptop with only one USB port.
Yup, epic fail here as noted by others. Check out the Dell E4200 which is a *current* model and note the single USB port. Unfortunately I own one of these suckers and it is as insanely annoying as you might imagine: http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/business/Dell-Laptops/laptop_latitude_e4200/pd.aspx?refid=laptop_latitude_e4200&cs=ukbsdt1&s=bsd [dell.com]
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Re:It's that time again, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
But he'll be happier once he reaches puberty to have a stronger right hand/arm!
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I too owned one. They actually worked pretty good. The problem was I didnt have arms of steel. I could play using one for maybe 20-30 mins tops.
For those who dont know what I am talking about take your arm hold it out in front of you. Now do that for 20 mins. By the time min 20 rolls around your arm will be in some serious pain.
Good idea took some tweaking. With the wii they got it right. The control was light and you could hold it anywhere. The glove you had to hold it pretty much 'just right' for
Re:It's that time again, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
I never got to own a Power Glove :(
When I saw the advertisements for it, I went apeshit because of the hype. The only way to describe myself in front of the TV was Wayne from Wayne's World chanting, "it will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine". Kind of an obsession for awhile...
Which brings me to my other memory of the damned thing. There was a TV show with Kuppa from Super Mario Bros. Can't remember too much about the show, but I do remember a sweepstakes that allowed you to send a postcard to win a Power Glove.
I ended up sending several hundred postcards into the show and did not win. Of course, I had to take a box of stamps from my father's office that was apparently valued at "severe ass whooping" to do it.
Good thing I was never disappointed by it I guess.
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We used the power glove for Top Gun, but it was still ass as a controller. There was a little bit of gimmick to it, but better results were elsewhere. The better controller for that was the big ass Nintendo joystick.
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And where's the innovation in voice commands?
Theoretically (code word for "I'm not convinced this isn't utter bullshit"), Kinect does quite a bit more than just simple voice recognition. It uses the camera to track the player's mouth, so it knows where it should be listening and can then do spatial noise canceling to listen to just the player's voice.
This is according to the articles I've read about the Kinect, at least, and I'm not entirely convinced that the authors of the articles actually know how it works and aren't speculating. So... whatever. T
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no. the only thing it can do is simple voice recognition. face recognition is completely separate and is used to login different people to xbox live.
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And where's the innovation in voice commands? Is it the fact that your XBox won't "set so double the killer delete select all"?
Player: Kinect, voice command: rm -rf kin* ... thank you so much. I feel better already.
Kinect: Kin phone removed from memory
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Mindlink (Score:2)
The first article fails for not mentioning the Atari Mindlink. [wikipedia.org]
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um but it does, its 1 of only 2 controller-free controllers on the list (I dont really count the power glove its just, but if you do make that 3)
TFA is pretty crap, but whoever put up this summary is a tard, TFA has stuff on it not even release yet, so "not from the past" has a jaguar controller so its not "controller-free", and 1 was never released so how could it "fail"
grumble
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Ah I see there are 2 articles in this summary, my bad
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The guy behind the Atari Mindlink was a real interesting piece of work. He'd wander the hallways of the building we were in (the consumer folks had been co-located with the Atari Coinop engineering folks) with the band on his forehead, apparently looking for praise and adulation. He was /so/ convinced that royalties on it (even as an individual developer) would make him a millionaire.
I tried using it once. Could sort of make a paddle go left and right, and I got a headache.
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Where'd you get one? It was never released.
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Power Glove (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the Power Glove... 'cuz it's so bad.
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It's the first freaking image!
Jaguar controller (Score:2)
I actually found the Jaguar controller to be pretty comfortable.
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On thing people don't realize, is that the keypad was supposed to be simple to use because you'd place an overlay with icons over it. You wouldn't press button 1, you'd press an icon of a pistol, etc. Not losing the overlay is a different matter all together.
I really wish the Jaguar did better...
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If it didn't cost a million, billion dollars it might have done. If you didn't need to plug a CDROM into the top when everyone else but Nintendo was going optical... Or of course, if it had more than three good games
Fred Savage (Score:1)
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Not controller free (Score:2)
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There's only one way you get me to buy Game Boat (Score:2)
An Impressive Try (Score:5, Interesting)
I went 3 days after launch expecting to find a ton of Kinects in store after the mixed reviews, but when I went to futureshop there was only a single unit left. I was shooting the shit with the guy in the game/movie section, and he said demand was far higher than they predicted. Interesting considering the device is far from perfect. In the end though, I have had a ton of fun so far. I just dont know when the novelty will wear off (like it did with the Wii) but this is just my 2 cents on the Kinect after a few days use. I really like it, but time and games will tell if it can be a Wii killer, just like the PS Move also hopes to be. At least sales wise I dont think initially this can be classified a failure, and use wise I also wouldn't call it a failure, just not a complete success. Solve the lag issues, get some longer lasting games, give a better menu system than holding your hand over a button (have you ever tried pausing with Kinect while playing?!?! you have to stand still for like 2 seconds) and extend the Kinect use to incorperate voice commands at all times, and it could be.
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They bought the camera from overseas but it's not the really innovative part of kinect. That involved a lot of R&D in house.
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>>The rest - skeleton recognition - is not especially hard. And MS doing it not quite well.
As someone who worked for a company that licensed tech to do this about four years ago, I can assure you that single camera skeleton recognition is not an easy problem in the slightest.
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Uhhhhhh no. That is completely backwards.
Depth sensors are relatively easy to create. Full body motion capture from a 3D shape is very difficult to do.
Re:An Impressive Try (Score:4, Informative)
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PrimeSense system had originally had built in depth processing on the chip
This _IS_ the original reference design, with processing done in asic
, and that was planned to be included the project Natal, but at the end MS decided it would be too expensive and moved processing to CPU.
M$ didnt decide shit, they are using reference design, depth map is streamed to the Xbox.
Of cause that caused lag. Though I've read in the latest versions they had reduced lag considerably.
So there is Kinect V2.0 somewhere already?
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It's the lag that kills the experience though. Once the novelty wears off, any sort of gaming becomes a drag when there is lag. The used to be a Japanese arcade game like Time Crisis but different in that you had to physically duck to dodge incoming bullets. I played that game once or twice but the lag on it killed the whole experience.
Think about the Wii. Most of the original Wii sports game made use of the precise timing for controller movements to control the on-screen action. Wii tennis for example is a
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Exactly why the Wii is perfect for the casual gamer. They can get into the game without having to learn all the controls. They don't expect to dominate the competition, but just have a little fun.
There are a few games on the Wii that attract a more hardcore gaming crowd. Mario Kart or Monster Hunter Tri, for example offer motion sensor controls but for the players who take the games beyond casual, they always choose to use a Classic Controller or Gamecube. Some Mario Kart tournaments even prevent the pl
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Its well known that MS actually bought the tech from an over seas company.
Yes... and by 'overseas' we mean 'an Asian company'.
as Im a person that cant enunciate my R's very well, this was a bit of a surprise.
Umm, ya. Like I said, it's an Asian company so it shouldn't have been a sulplise in the first place.
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Hm, maybe I am old and slow, or maybe I'm not having that issue of lag - I haven't really noticed it; it's felt pretty responsive to me. I tried it on both an XBox 360 Elite and on my XBox 360 4GB.
Dance Central is FUN! I can't dance to save my life, but it's FUN!
Odama? (Score:1)
Hoqe and Chenge (Score:2)
how to rock the powqerglove (Score:2)
new school [photobucket.com]
Guaranteed clickization (Score:2)
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Activator (Score:1)
I was so happy when I got the Sega Activator for my birthday. That lasted for all of 20 min...and that's including setup time.
PowerGlove was good for Garage VR (Score:2, Interesting)
The U-Force worked (Score:2, Informative)
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The U-force had a flight YOKE and the stick part of the yoke was inserted into a hole that did not allow for keeping it centered.
When the U-force did somewhat work it really only worked when it was flat, and then it was only somewhat usable for playing games such as Super Mario Bros. Also consider that even when playing Super Mario Bros. doing the larger gap jumps that required hold right (so hover the left hand over right sensor on left half of the U-force in a flat position) + speed (B Button, so hover th
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This all seemed like advertising shill to me. It was like.
"X device sucked, unlike Kinect."
"Y device sucked, unlike Kinect."
"Z device sucked, unlike Kinect."
If they would have put, "unlike Kinect, Wii, or Move." it would have been more neutral.
EyeToy was no failure (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article: "Sony dabbled twice with console-based webcams over the last two generations, and it only got any success after it introduced the Move."
From Wikipedia: "As of November 6, 2008, the EyeToy has sold 10.5 million units worldwide.".
10.5 million sales is most definitely a success by any definition.
The whole article strikes me as a Kinect advert: "Despite the occasional misinterpreted gesture, Microsoft's Kinect offers impressively immersive game controls and voice commands, all without needing to lay your finger on a single button."
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Interesting, though, that 10.6 million [wikipedia.org] is a failure by every single measure.
Developers Should Heed Messages of Past & Pres (Score:1)
The Future Envisioned (Score:1)
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I am not sure there is a demand anymore, everyone that wants a 2005 game console probably already has one, needing more sales they looked at what did out sell them and lately get in on the action
one major problem though, nintendo, and lets face it, they could give you a turd on a stick and it would sell like hotcakes, infact they DID with the standard wii controls and it sold
also nintendo historically is a very gimmicky company, they have products that last in sales but only cause of things like color cases
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its much less of a problem at a lower price point yes, and typically they added value where as sony did not
for example gameboy vs gameboy pocket vs gameboy color
or GBA vs GBA SP, vs GBA micro
what did sony do?
psp phat to psp slim, made the case cheaper and more apt to break, while only shaving mm off the thickness, and you had to buy new accessories
psp slim to psp bright, which did add a brighter screen, but at the cost of image quality
psp bright to psp go, which made it incompatible with everything previous
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well with the gameboys
pocket halved the battery requirement, had longer play times and a better screen (and I think bigger)
color gave well color and slightly better battery life
gba sp added a backlight and better battery life, micro added even more battery life
the sony revisions actually decreased battery life in the case of the phat vs the slim because they had to use a smaller battery to fit into the thinner more fragile case, the bright reduced it a tiny bit more
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There were also a few trivial additions as well such as inbuilt mike and I believe there was more ram that allowed for better caching of the UMD.
The way I see the PSP's refresh cycle (with the exception of the PSPGo) is more akin to the GBA > GBA SP > GBA SP (B (The B had a better internal back light)), the 2000 like the G
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Not true; although the PSP2000/3000 used a smaller battery you got the same amount of game time as the 1000 through some effeciencies gains with the newer hardware components.
not according to my tests, yes close but no not the same, in the red
Re:MS Gets Points for Innovation??? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Wii also uses a light and camera, the setup is just reversed. The Wii has the camera in the controller and the light in the sensor bar, from what I heard Move lacks accuracy when it comes to pointing (which is mostly rotation) while of course having more when it comes to detecting controller movement (which is mostly translation). Yes, the Move has a gyroscope but that's not nearly as accurate as the sensor bar setup when it comes to determining where the player is pointing since the gyroscope will drift and the camera cannot recalibrate it (since the light is spherical).
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The Wii has the camera in the controller and the light in the sensor bar
I don't think it's so much a camera as a photodiode. [wikipedia.org]
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If you go into the Wii's controller calibration screen, you can see an image of exactly what the wiimote's IR camera sees. The exact technology is irrelevant, it can capture and image therefore it is a camera.
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Well, if you can determine the direction of multiple light sources with just a photo diode, sure.
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It's a low resolution monochromatic camera (looking through filter transparent to IR); it's just that the data output is not as a video stream, but as locations of light sources tracked in its FOV.
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Well, you still fail to adress the issue: Nobody will make games thats innoative and properly uses the controler.
Look at the Wii: We already got tons of horror eksamples of the motion controls are just being used tagged on as a gimmick, instead of doing it properly. The orginal wiimote is accurate, the only downside is that the interlal sensor is inferior to its wiimotion+ upgrade, but it can still detect which way its being swung or tilted perfectly. The nunchuck does suffer from not getting a upgrade, but