TheQuickBrownFox

This is great news. The hub in SMG was nice but it became a real pain once you really got into the game and needed to revisit various levels. I want to turn on my console, start the game and continue on the level where I left off straight away.

And in response to a previous comment: Who cares about the story? SMG didn't force you to sit through much but skipping past it by mashing the A-button was the low point of the game. Also, I didn't like going through a long animated sequence and the several button presses required to go through all the notifications and save process after each stage. I hope that is all streamlined. One button press to save, please.

QI is alright but often the facts just aren't that interesting. Also, sometimes it feels like it's just Stephen Fry showing off how good his memory is. And when Rory McGrath's there it becomes a giant pissing contest that's embarrass to watch. Memory is not intelligence or humour. It makes me miss the young Stephen Fry when he was still edgy.

I haven't followed any Avatar hype and I just watched the movie and game trailer for the first time.

All I can say is it looks like absolute dreck. The whole space marine fetish is just boring and shit. The story and characters look like utter wank. This sort of thing was cool 15 years ago. Now it's just very tired.

Anyone who is very excited about this franchise should closely consider their relationship with marketing.

Ok so now you've googled that for the sake of this discussion, have you done the same for the other researchers you refer to? Again, it's about perspective. I'm not belittling his work but there will lots of PhD's and large game companies will have several working for them. This is only news here because he is a youtube phenomenon. And I don't even mind that, only the senseless gushing and the belief that it makes all the difference.

(sorry. posted this in the wrong place first time)

Ok so now you've googled that for the sake of this discussion, have you done the same for the other researchers you refer to? Again, it's about perspective. I'm not belittling his work but there will lots of PhD's and large game companies will have several working for them. This is only news here because he is a youtube phenomenon. And I don't even mind that, only the senseless gushing and the belief that it makes all the difference.

Why are you so impressed with him joystiq? Because, you've heard of him? There are surely hundreds of people in the games industry with similar or greater creativity and intelligence. They just haven't uploaded a video of themselves toying with a popular game controller on youtube. Get some perspective. This news says nothing about the potential success of Natal.

Everyone hoping for 1:1 motion in sword combat stop for a second and think about this: How would it work?

Really imagine what it would be like if the wii remote movements directly corresponded with the sword's movement. Your character would look stupid. Perhaps this is acceptable but we are left with more problems.

Imagine trying to come up with a working combat system to fit around 1:1 motion control. If the enemies had attack animations and weapons that looked realistic then it would be an incredibly unforgiving experience since holding your wiimote at the wrong angle by a couple of degrees would mean the middle of your sword would be more than 10 centimetres out. This would be the difference between a good and bad outcome. A more forgiving system would not appear to be consistent on the screen or not follow your own movements perfectly and would therefore be dubbed unrealistic.

Finally, and maybe the least often realised, a swordfight involves two or more swords interacting with each other. They influence each other's position since they obviously cannot occupy the same space at the same time and they change each other's momentum on contact. How would these events be represented on screen while maintaining 1:1 motion control, since the wiimote has no force feedback? It would immediately break the illusion of control and start to feel "waggly".

What I'm getting at is: realistic 1:1 sword fighting in the form that most of your are yearning for it is impossible with wii motion plus or any of the technology currently in development (as far as we know) by nintendo's rivals. This is why the early motion plus tech demo showed rag dolls (lack of workable combat system) getting absolutely shafted by super-human strength swords (lack of force feedback). It seemed to work much better for throwing things.

Perhaps someone will manage to come up with something that resembles fun sword-fighting (and Zelda could be a prime contender for that but don't get your hopes up) but as for the thing you actually want: forget it. It's impossible.

I'm hoping wii-sports resorts will show us there are some other fun applications for motion plus. And having said all that, this looks fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wa20-ZN6Ac

It is a myth that exercise will reduce your body's fat stores. The best way to do that is to reduce your carbohydrate intake as much as possible and eat a high fat, high protien diet.

That's all well and good but Nintendo are the most innovative company in the games industry and their own games are among the most well-polished and critically received games out there. How does that fit into the McDonald's analogy? Oh wait it was just a way of drawing controversy and comment. Oh... whoops.

The infra-red pointing system alone can detect rotation, because the "sensor bar" emits from 2 points. However, I suspect the accelerometers are used so that the system knows the correct orientation. For example, if the remote detects 2 horizontally aligned dots could mean you're not tilting it at all or you're holding it upside down. The accelerometers would distinguish which of these is happening.

It's hardly motion control, though I would be surprised if the game didn't have some true waggling motion control for occasional melee encounters or reloading or whatever (I've never played Dead Space).