Let me start off by saying that I do not own a Wii, nor have I owned a Nintendo system since NES. What I am a fan of, though, is ingenuity in game technology development. Head Tracking for the Wii, or any other system for that matter, is cutting edge stuff. An insightful demonstration can be seen here. To be able to actually look around a corner in your living room and have that translate into your character looking around their respective in-game corner represents a major step forward in gaming technology. Or does it?

I’ve always respected Nintendo and I thought the Wii was an interesting system with a lot of potential. And while I am a fan of ingenuity in game development, head tracking is a little ahead of its time (in a bad way). The future of gaming, 10 or 20 years from now, will include head tracking, I’m sure of it. If not anything else, Nintendo will have fully embraced it by then. For me though, head tracking is a little too much right now. Gaming is already a typically full immersion experience. Think about playing Call of Duty 4 online and shouting through your headset, launching your control across the room in anger (a fully interactive experience, no doubt!). In all seriousness though, do we need more than what we have right now? It may simply be Nintendo wanting to see how far they can take this gaming experience, which I’m fine with, but I hope they have the sense to realize this is probably not the right time for such technology.

Despite my opinion, gaming technology is moving forward rapidly, and I do applaud Nintendo for being on the brink of the tech race. Hell, when Duck Hunt and the NES Zapper there must have been folks like myself blogging (err...how did they communicate back then? Carrier Pigeons?) about how that technology would flop. And as we all know, the Zapper gun was awesome, so I may very well be wrong about Nintendo, Electronic Arts, or any other developers’ pursuit of head tracking technology.

Your thoughts?

Posted by Daniel on 07/30 at 06:01 AM
(6) Comments