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Independent developers who want to get into creating motion-enabled apps have a new outlet. Nintendo yesterday announced a platform for developing and selling independent Wii applications — called WiiWare. WiiWare provides the development platform for developers to begin game development on a PC and finish it on a Wii itself. The games will be offered for sale online, starting in early 2008, through the Wii’s online Wii Store.
We’ve seen several announcements lately where mobile phone cameras are being leveraged as optical motion sensing devices for enabling motion applications in mobile devices. While some accelerometer-equipped phones are available outside of the U.S. — and the iPhone will soon bring this to the North American market — most phones shipping today (and likely for the foreseeable future) won’t have these devices inside.
ConcreteSoftware has just launched a “3d Lawn Darts” game which is motion-enabled for the Windows Mobile platform. Expect to see more announcements like this in the short term.
We’ll be exploring the optical option — its benefits and shortcomings — in a future piece.
Talismoon announced their new Tilt Board upgrade for the Xbox 360 controller. This board — definitely more for hackers than mass market consumers, since it requires soldering into the controller — will cost $40 when it hits the streets next week.
Of course the open question is what games will support this new controller (none that we are aware of), but at least its some progress towards what we see as the inevitable inclusion of motion sensing by Microsoft.
Wired’s Game Life blog just reviewed Logitech’s new Playstation 3 controller. The verdict for this new controller which doesn’t support the PS3′s Sixaxis motion sensing control? “Why bother”
Our favorite quote: ” So it just sits there, alone and unloved, wishing it were a motion sensor.”
CableWorld has a good interview up with Hillcrest Labs
‘ EVP Andy Addis. It’s a good update on the company’s progress to date in various markets (MSOs, T-commerce, etc.). Perhaps most interesting is some of the consumer research that Hillcrest shares here:
We did a large consumer study with 450 consumers and 14% said they watch free on demand three times a week or more. After giving them a demo and letting them play with [our system], they told us their free on demand usage would triple and their pay-per-view/VOD buy rates [for movies] would also triple, from about 1.1 per month to about 3.3 a month. And as we know in cable, as usage goes up, churn goes down.
Read the whole thing here.
Freescale has announced a new 3-axis accelerometer that’s 77% smaller than their previous versions. The new MMA7450L chip is aimed at mobile devices and other portable electronics, providing motion control and support for apps like hard drive “parking” during a drop situation.
CNN has a fun piece up today about “Wiiitis” — a family practice doctor in Boston made the news with an article he wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine about his experience with a sore shoulder after several vigorous hours of Wii tennis.
Nothing really significant here — we’re posting this just for fun — but it does show how mainstream Wii has made motion apps that humorous articles about the technology make the front page of CNN.com.
You can read the article here. The NEJM article is here behind a subscription wall for those readers who are also MDs.
