For more than a year, now, Nintendo’s discussed the “Revolution.” Not much had been seen, or shown, but even after E3, the hype was all about a revolutionary new controller that would change the way that we interact with games.

http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275/img_3073869.html

There it is.

The thing you don’t see is a 3-D response to motion in space, along with rotation. So, you could supposedly move this iPod Shuffle around in space, and the game could read where the thing is, and what orientation it’s in, and use that as some form of input. You can also apparently plug peripherals into it, like an analog stick & two triggers, and do something or another with that sort of thing.

Now, I think it’s sort of a noble concept. But I think it’s a noble concept in the way that I think that say, the 32X was a noble concept.

1.) The thing looks like a complete ergonomic disaster. The DS was bad, but this thing’s even worse. Nintendo expects me to hold that for hours on end? Really? I only have access to two buttons at a time? Or a D-pad and one button? Weren’t they supposed to have a library of NES games? How do they expect me to play them? I suppose they’ll release an old-skool NES controller add-on? (actually, from what I’ve read, this is the one cool thing I’ve heard – if you turn the controller sideways, it’s basically an NES layout. D-pad, and a and b buttons. How the concavity behind the D-pad is when you’re holding it, I have no idea, but the concept is cool, at least.)

2.) Hold your arm out. Leave it there for five minutes. Hell, move it around if you want. Now, imagine you’re say, in the middle of a boss fight, and you’ve been holding your arm out there for five or so minutes, and man, your arm’s getting tired… yeah. Not so great now, is it?

3.) All our conference rooms at work have gyroscopic mice. They are limited to moving a cursor on a 2-D plane, and they’re not terribly accurate. They shake a lot, because your hand shakes a lot (so, maybe they *are* terribly accurate, but terribly accurate isn’t really what I want). If Nintendo wants me to move this thing through 3-D space, including rotation, in some sort of precise manner… well, they’d better have substantially better tech than the gyro mice, or it’s going to be extremely frustrating to play.

4.) Nintendo’s never been able to fully stock a product lineup. That is, first party titles simply aren’t enough to keep a console stocked with titles for a full year. Because this thing is completely unique, there’s simply no reasonable way to port to it. As a result, I would suspect that relatively few companies are going to make the investment in titles exclusive to the Revolution. On top of that, even if it’s the least “powerful” from a hardware perspective, you’re going to be competing with MS and Sony in a relatively niche way, so your installed base will be relatively low, and even with today’s tech, development costs aren’t anywhere near “cheap.” So it doesn’t make economic sense for developers, unless you can be sure you’ll be releasing in a void between first party titles, in which case, people will probably buy your game regardless of quality, simply because they need something to play.

*shrugs*

I hope I’m the naysayer who’s proven wrong a year after this thing’s released. Maybe Nintendo will pull some software innovation out the same place they pulled Nintendogs. But Nintendogs isn’t enough to really justify a system (without Meteos and Advance Wars), and frankly, I understand what you can do with a touch screen. Realistically, I simply don’t really know what I could do with this controller that would be *fun,* and not just novel.

Hm.