The Nintendo Revolution

I've always loved Nintendo games/consoles. Gamecube is the only of this generation of consoles I've owned, and will be likely for the next generation too: I know I wont' be playing the next Zelda game on PC, but most PS2/XBOX games I can get on PC :)

How Stuff Works: How the Revolution Works

This is a bit of old new, however, here it goes:

The "Revolution" is mostly in the controller: the hardware of the console itself will be competive with XBOX 360 / PS3 (probably in the middle somewhere like this generation.)

The exciting thing is the controller. Just imagine how different it will make a game like say, Metroid Prime (the above configuation would be awesome for it, with the "nunchuck" analog stick.) You'd feel like you were Samus!

The key to Nintendo's new game interface lies inside the controller. Instead of using a joystick to control the game, the primary control is the controller itself. The controller contains solid-state accelerometers and gyroscopes that let it sense:

• Tilting and rotation up and down
• Tilting and rotation left and right
• Rotation along the main axis (as with a screwdriver)
• Acceleration up and down
• Acceleration left and right
• Acceleration toward the screen and away

Hence, you would have full 3d Position control by moving the "remote", and also tilting and screwdriver like rotation.

That's like.. 9 degrees of Freedom, or soemthing crazy like that.

How does Nintendo plan to use this "new" (none of these ideas are new, but their implementation may be) technology in games? See for yourself.


In the end though, the success of Nintendo's new console will depend on making this idea work AWESOME and be totally INCORPORATED into most of the games (this is why addons have historically never succeeded.), rather than it just remaining a gimmick. Take for instance, the Nintendo DS: most of the "touch" games make only rather gimmicky use of the new control method. Hence, the DS has had only marginal success.