Extra Punctuation: Getting Innovation Wrong
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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Sorry, that was supposed to be "defensive".Lukeje said:
And unless Nintendo implement a screen technology that is years ahead of anything else available (and, the best of my knowledge, yet non-existent), any controller-based touch screen will have all of the above fundamental flaws.
I think it?s abundantly clear what the ?next dual analog sticks? is. It?s the back touchpad on the NGP. That should be the thing they stick in the next Nintendo controller, a multitouch panel on the back rather than a touchscreen on the front. Forget the motion control and cameras altogether. Think about this; it?s a mouse. The very first thing I thought when they unveiled the NGP was you use the back touchpad to control the camera in games instead of the analog stick. It would give you mouse look style camera control; you adjust the exact position of your view instead of adjusting the rate at which it?s moving in one direction. Of course you can use it for other things, but that mouse style freelook is the first thing I think of. On a handheld it gives you that option without having to obscure the screen, and it would work fine on a home console with the right controller shape.
Its position on the back is the perfect place; a touchpad works better when it?s bigger (you have more surface area to swipe around on). There?s more unused space on the bottom of a gamepad or the base of a handheld than on the top. It also puts the touchpad on a separate layer from the controls that you operate with your thumbs or index fingers. You can use your remaining fingers to use it simultaneously with the usual face (sticks, buttons) and shoulder controls (triggers, bumpers), and since it?s a multitouch pad you can adjust what it actually does based on how many fingers are actually touching it.
Because it?s on the back, it doesn?t crowd out any other controls. You can have all the same input features as a regular gamepad, but with the touchpad added in to the mix. In the same way rumble was added to gamepads there?s the potential to someday have a touchpad that can alter its surface texture, giving us another type of force feedback. A real haptic touchpad is far more likely than a haptic touch screen because the pad doesn?t have to display anything. It can be composed of a more malleable material than any screen.
There?s plenty of room for a large touchpad on the bottom of a classic controller pro, and that?s what Nintendo should do instead of sticking a touchscreen on the front. And if your argument against it is that it would be hard to avoid touching, remember that there are really only 2 use cases where the pad would actually trigger any input. Either it?s only used in certain special circumstances outside of which touching it triggers nothing, or it is used for a common action (like looking) so you want to be touching it most of the time anyway.
I think this is the exact opposite of a gimmick; it?s something that would lead to better control and more control without being cumbersome in complex games the way motion control is (or breaking immersion). It?s simply a way of adding a mouse on a gamepad, one with the added options provided by multitouch and the potential for more haptic feedback in the future.
Its position on the back is the perfect place; a touchpad works better when it?s bigger (you have more surface area to swipe around on). There?s more unused space on the bottom of a gamepad or the base of a handheld than on the top. It also puts the touchpad on a separate layer from the controls that you operate with your thumbs or index fingers. You can use your remaining fingers to use it simultaneously with the usual face (sticks, buttons) and shoulder controls (triggers, bumpers), and since it?s a multitouch pad you can adjust what it actually does based on how many fingers are actually touching it.
Because it?s on the back, it doesn?t crowd out any other controls. You can have all the same input features as a regular gamepad, but with the touchpad added in to the mix. In the same way rumble was added to gamepads there?s the potential to someday have a touchpad that can alter its surface texture, giving us another type of force feedback. A real haptic touchpad is far more likely than a haptic touch screen because the pad doesn?t have to display anything. It can be composed of a more malleable material than any screen.
There?s plenty of room for a large touchpad on the bottom of a classic controller pro, and that?s what Nintendo should do instead of sticking a touchscreen on the front. And if your argument against it is that it would be hard to avoid touching, remember that there are really only 2 use cases where the pad would actually trigger any input. Either it?s only used in certain special circumstances outside of which touching it triggers nothing, or it is used for a common action (like looking) so you want to be touching it most of the time anyway.
I think this is the exact opposite of a gimmick; it?s something that would lead to better control and more control without being cumbersome in complex games the way motion control is (or breaking immersion). It?s simply a way of adding a mouse on a gamepad, one with the added options provided by multitouch and the potential for more haptic feedback in the future.
Yes, 3D will need to have worse graphics than the rest of the current consoles, but then they will keep making progress until they reach the glorious point when they can have HD 3D. To me, 3D effects add more to the gameplay than HD does. It makes the environment feel more threedimentional (strange how that is), which can add a lot to the experience. I don't need anyone to tell me 3D is the future, I just need to look at the graphics to see what I prefer.
I fair 3D effects on the 3DS might become the same as motion controls on the Wii though - with Nintendo being nearly the only ones who manage to intergrate it correctly.
I fair 3D effects on the 3DS might become the same as motion controls on the Wii though - with Nintendo being nearly the only ones who manage to intergrate it correctly.
Hmmm, well my DS Lite finally went the way of the dodo, and I picked up a 3DS to replace it... of course I pretty much just use it to play DS games at the moment, so I can agree with the gist of this article still. I was looking at the 3D games and honestly none of them really appealed to me much.
IMO a gimmick is only as good as what you can do with it, the problem with motion controls is that they were never usable for anything other than the most casual of games. Almost any attempt to produce a game with any kind of real depth with them seemed to result in a spectacular failure. It's pretty sad when it's viewed as a sort of achievement that this new, innovative technology can do something that was being done easily with the older stuff. "We made a shooter that works with motion controls" is kind of ridiculous when you already had shooters.
Whether 3D pans out for the 3DS to me largely depends on whether they can come up with some games that exploit this. It's possible though, as while it took a while I was skeptical of the whole "touch screen" thing, and then I played games like "The World Ends With You" and "Etrian Odyssey" and felt that it was really neat. Well the former did I guess, the latter mostly earned nerd points from a guy who used to play games like "Might And Magic" which included pads of graph paper to map the game as you explored it... sort of like people did with PnP RPGs at the time.
The thing is that right now, 3D has done nothing to convince me "wow, this is a really awesome gameplay feature", like the touch screen gimmick eventually did.
Personally, for full sized consoles I've been of the opinion that having seperate screens attached to the controllers might not be a bad thing. I mean imagine a FPS game where the screen on your controller effectively becomes a motion detector readout, like thy had in the "Aliens" movie, or displays an interactive mini-map or whatever. Not to mention the potential for more games like "The World ends With You" where you can control what's happening on two screens that relate to each other simultaneously.
Of course given the greed of the industry I can't see them producing a controller that is basically a re-purposed DS at a reasonable price.
IMO a gimmick is only as good as what you can do with it, the problem with motion controls is that they were never usable for anything other than the most casual of games. Almost any attempt to produce a game with any kind of real depth with them seemed to result in a spectacular failure. It's pretty sad when it's viewed as a sort of achievement that this new, innovative technology can do something that was being done easily with the older stuff. "We made a shooter that works with motion controls" is kind of ridiculous when you already had shooters.
Whether 3D pans out for the 3DS to me largely depends on whether they can come up with some games that exploit this. It's possible though, as while it took a while I was skeptical of the whole "touch screen" thing, and then I played games like "The World Ends With You" and "Etrian Odyssey" and felt that it was really neat. Well the former did I guess, the latter mostly earned nerd points from a guy who used to play games like "Might And Magic" which included pads of graph paper to map the game as you explored it... sort of like people did with PnP RPGs at the time.
The thing is that right now, 3D has done nothing to convince me "wow, this is a really awesome gameplay feature", like the touch screen gimmick eventually did.
Personally, for full sized consoles I've been of the opinion that having seperate screens attached to the controllers might not be a bad thing. I mean imagine a FPS game where the screen on your controller effectively becomes a motion detector readout, like thy had in the "Aliens" movie, or displays an interactive mini-map or whatever. Not to mention the potential for more games like "The World ends With You" where you can control what's happening on two screens that relate to each other simultaneously.
Of course given the greed of the industry I can't see them producing a controller that is basically a re-purposed DS at a reasonable price.
Well, one does have to realize though - this is not entirely a matter opinion. Thing is, an eye can, measurably, tell the pixelation on a DVD assuming you have a large enough (but still fitting in a residential area) screen, and the ear (not everyone's, but people with good musical ears, i.e. sound engineers and musicians) can, still, tell which frequencies are missing from the DVD sound channels. But for Blu Ray - an eye literally cannot identify the pixels, therefore, adding any more would not add anything visible. (Unless the household screens got so large that they wouldn't fit in households any more).Squilookle said:
Now, one could argue that "even if my eye can tell that pixelation exists, it in no way detracts from the experience" - and this, unlike the previous point, WOULD in fact be a matter of opinion. But even if you do hold that opinion - you really can't argue against measurable (both by human eye and more precise tools) differences in image quality, which, one can theorize, do make a difference to a lot of people (and they do).
An important question is also this - when you say DVD is enough for you - on what size screen?
Ooh. Yes. You probably could. I believe, in fact, there's already a DSi game that uses that technique. (The DSi had a camera.)Santa216 said:
The Wii remote's IR tracking system is a lot faster than most webcams, but really, any webcam can do this if it has face tracking software.
But there's a major bonus if the camera and screen are physically attached, because otherwise you kind of need a calibration run every time someone moves the camera.
So something like the DSi/3ds with a camera in a fixed relation to the screen would be perfect for it.
You know what? You're the first person I've ever talked with that gave a decent reason why Blu Ray should exist other than just 'MOAR PIXELS NOW GET EXPENSIVE UPGRADE COS U HAVE TOO!' When you put it your way it actually does make sense. I'm also still a bit bitter how aggressive Sony is with pushing this new crap. I'm quite glad that their UMD format failed, and don't have much against the PS3 personally, but I'm glad to see that their 'power+size=good, justified a huge price tag' marketing didn't work. With any luck they'll treat their customers a bit more respectfully next time, instead of treating them like spoiled kids who will pay anything for the biggest lollipop.Volkov said:
I hate to break this to you, but Apple is actually carrying the ball. Much to my dismay, may I add.
Now, regarding stereoscopic 3D, I'd like to play the devils advocate for a sec. Do you remember when the first "3D" games started to appear? (you know, the flat 3D we've been playing all these years). At that point, we moved from beautifully hand drawn sprites, to blocky, untextured polygons. Back then, people also said we were reducing the graphic quality.
I dislike steroscopic 3D as much as the next guy, but.. just saying.
Now, regarding stereoscopic 3D, I'd like to play the devils advocate for a sec. Do you remember when the first "3D" games started to appear? (you know, the flat 3D we've been playing all these years). At that point, we moved from beautifully hand drawn sprites, to blocky, untextured polygons. Back then, people also said we were reducing the graphic quality.
I dislike steroscopic 3D as much as the next guy, but.. just saying.
With no mind to dig through all the comments to check if anyone else has said the same, I'll dive right into my retort to the following quote:
"... and no new technology has ever lasted that's less convenient to use than what it's supposed to replace."
Nice generalization there. Lots of inventions' first versions were a lot harder to use than the things they replaced.
Case in point: The flintlock rifle versus the (long)bow. The bow can fire as many arrows as your bowman's arms can make it, while the first rifles were only able to fire once every minute or so with experienced reloaders. You had to carry along all kinds of equipment and keep the rifle clean during every battle, while the bow was way more simple and versatile. Wielded by experienced archers, it was more accurate at longer distances than any rifle (even those used by highly trained personnel). If at any step in the reloading procedure a shooter mucks up, he has the chance to lose limbs or even die. Doesn't sound that great on paper, does it?
Similar points could be made about automobiles and horses (horses were more versatile, easier to fuel up and maintain, and did not require roads) and several other very important inventions.
Just because an invention is less convenient it doesn't mean in the slightest it's not going to utterly disembowel their predecessors, and current marketing voids any sort of natural selection through ease of use, of which Apple churns out a new example every other year.
"... and no new technology has ever lasted that's less convenient to use than what it's supposed to replace."
Nice generalization there. Lots of inventions' first versions were a lot harder to use than the things they replaced.
Case in point: The flintlock rifle versus the (long)bow. The bow can fire as many arrows as your bowman's arms can make it, while the first rifles were only able to fire once every minute or so with experienced reloaders. You had to carry along all kinds of equipment and keep the rifle clean during every battle, while the bow was way more simple and versatile. Wielded by experienced archers, it was more accurate at longer distances than any rifle (even those used by highly trained personnel). If at any step in the reloading procedure a shooter mucks up, he has the chance to lose limbs or even die. Doesn't sound that great on paper, does it?
Similar points could be made about automobiles and horses (horses were more versatile, easier to fuel up and maintain, and did not require roads) and several other very important inventions.
Just because an invention is less convenient it doesn't mean in the slightest it's not going to utterly disembowel their predecessors, and current marketing voids any sort of natural selection through ease of use, of which Apple churns out a new example every other year.
I can only tell the difference between normal and HD on a small screen (Monitor for example) but even then it's mostly resolution. I can't even tell the difference between normal and HD on the 19" or my 32" TVs in my house. Not many of my family can. It is useful for some things, but sometimes I do wonder why they need it for everything. Yes, HD probably help distance wise, but my living room/bedroom are not THAT big, and close up it still looks a little pixelated XDmjc0961 said:
Also, 3D makes my head spin: 3D cinemas, 3DS (tried it once, by the time I put it down I had to lie down because my head was aching and spinning), basically anything 3D other than life XD. And I can tell you now: I sure don't need 3D to make me lose my lunch or take 5 minutes to recover. A normal flat screen game (either 8-bit, PS1-3, Gamecube/Wii etc) with a good story line and (at least) half-decent controls and I'm happy. 3D and/or HD are NOT necessary for enjoyment. The need for 3D/HD varies from person to person. YOU may see it as a must, but other people don't and there is nothing that can be done to change that.