Hey, it’s Johnny Lee! You might remember Johnny from his pioneering motion work with the Wii Remote, which got him hired by Microsoft to help build Kinect. Well, Johnny’s now with Google, and his new project is even cooler.
That headline might sound corny, but it really could. You’ll see why in a second. Johnny and his colleagues at Google’s Project Tango are working on a phone that is able to scan the world around it and, over time, create maps out of it.
The primary purpose of this will be for Google’s obsession with mapping and navigation, of course, but as you can see at around 1:35 in the video below, they’re already coming up with game ideas as well.
Augmented Reality like they’re proposing isn’t new – there are primitive forms of it available on everything from current phones to the 3DS – but this phone’s tech could turn your entire world into a game stage, and let you simply add new content just by visiting new areas. Throw in the touch screen and motion controls and you’ve got a completely new way to play video games.
Which is kind of exciting! Then again, motion controls and touch screen input are often a nightmare on their own. Combine them and we’ll either have one hell of a breakthrough, or one hell of a problem.
Comments
11 responses to “Google’s New Phone Could Change The Way We Play Games”
So it’s Augmented Reality gaming?
That’s been done before but it never took off.
I’m inclined to disagree. Ingress has very much taken off.
ZZ noone gives a shit what these government puppets are doing anymore
The entire world begs to differ.
Google you better hope Bruce Wayne doesn’t see this, you stole his tech. It may be useful for finding the Joker in a crowded city, but this is a combination of Kinect and touch-screen – two of the worst things to happen in gaming ever.
Pretend video game worlds are far more interesting than my living room or anything in real life. Give me a occulus rift with an omni-treadmill to explore Skyrim any day.
Seems like great tech for use of mapping out real world locations combined with that software the photo image maps, add that to oculus rift 😉 now we are talking . I can imagine great things for gaming but believe the real world purposes will be greater
so much for WIi head tracking…
Just wait for the media outrage the first time some kid uses it to turn the corridors of his school into an FPS.
“Sony’s Eyetoy could change the way we play games”
“Nintendo’s Wii Motion controls could change the way we play games”
“Microsoft’s Kinect could change the way we play games”
“Sony’s Touchpad on the dual shock controller could change the way we play games”
“Nintendo’s Wii U touch screen could change the way we play games”
“Nintendo’s 3D DS could change the way we play games”
“Oculus Rift could change the way we play games”
Why do new technologies keep changing the way we play!
And why am I still playing games the same way I have for the past 20 years? But seriously, the way you play games is wrong. Stop that. You need to change how you play. ^_-
Meh, my 2 year old Experia Play is still the best gamers phone unless you like flappybird.