Japan' s Arcade VR Pod (the future of consoles?)

I saw this on the news recently, but there' s not ' big' article on it, so here' s a blog and some nice pics of the VR Pod: http://xboxmeagain.blogspot.com/2006/05/gundam-battlefield-pod.aspx

Currently a very big thing in Japanese arcades.

I got thinking about the Wii, and how the only way from there is to get more sensory involvement from the player; last year, a Nintendo exec (can' t remember exactly which) commented that he hoped to have entire rooms dedicated to gaming where the player could see in all directions.

So when I saw the VR Pod, I thought that if there was a way to maybe minimize, or redesign it to fit various genres (instead of just mecha games), this would be an interesting direction to take for the gen after next-gen.

Personally, I' m hoping Nintendo to be the forerunner of something like this

ORIGINAL: Byakko
last year, a Nintendo exec (can' t remember exactly which) commented that he hoped to have entire rooms dedicated to gaming where the player could see in all directions.

I believe it was Shigeru Miyamoto who said that he wanted games to fill entire rooms, to break out of the TV-sets. Exactly what he meant by that remains a mystery.

My thoughts when i hear Miyamoto say that is that the Revolution was going to incorporate a VR headset - much better then the Virtual boy iteration. But considering the Wiimote detects movement in absolute 3D then something like this would be worth considering.

This was the cabinet I posted up asking what it was a couple of months ago and no one replied!

Makes a little mroe sense now, although academics have been pushing caves and mini VR caves like this as the future for a VERY long time.

Bear in mind VR and more advanced display technologies are not the same.

It' s still nice to see some innovation making it to the arcades.