The good news: It looks big, and it looks original:
The bad news: Everything about the lead character still isn’t working for me. Reynolds is a good actor, but this STILL looks like epic miscasting. He looks like he’s hosting next year’s MTV Movie Awards, and he’s been edited into the clips “everyone remembers” from “Green Lantern” to make funny faces and do piss-takes on all the “weird stuff.”
Being right about something in the realm of technology-speculation happens to me so rarely I’m actually a little scared when it looks like it might… happen, I mean. So right now… I’m actually a little alarmed…
Awhile back, when we first got word that Nintendo’s yet-unamed, supposedly E3-bound Wii successor was going to have an iPad-esque touchscreen incorporated into it’s controller, I was struck by a crazy notion: What if the touchscreen IS the controller – as in, the WHOLE controller?
The “big idea,” as I imagined it, was that instead of having one controller with a pre-set arrangement of buttons that each game needed to be mapped to, it’d just be a blank touchscreen upon which each individual game would generate it’s own specific, tailor-made set of “virtual buttons.” Think about it: A six-button arcade setup for Street Fighter, SNES-style setup for platformers or retrogames, etc.
One HUGE problem with that idea: “Virtual buttons” SUCK, and for a very specific reason: You can’t feel them. There’s no texture, no tacticle-resistance, no “feedback.” At least, not on any of the virtual-buttons we’ve used so far…
Check out this story from The Escapist, which details some new Wii2 rumors including a Swedish site’s report that the controller’s touchscreen – whatever else it is – is utilizing a form of HAPTIC TECHNOLOGY, which basically means “artificial feedback.” Haptic Touchscreens, something Apple and Toshiba have been experimenting with and/or demonstrating, use an electrically-charged “film” on the screen surface to make different areas of the display “feel” noticeably different to the user’s fingertips. The practical application is obvious: You can make the “clickable” parts of a website, options-menu or even a virtual keypad feel distinguishable to the touch. Theoretically, that could ELIMINATE the one drawback to virtual-button game-controls.
Now, realistically, it’d probably still have physical analogue sticks and shoulder-buttons, but otherwise… yeah, until proven wrong (which is probably what’ll happen) I’m stickin’ with this insane theory: Wii2’s controller, to some degree, will be built around virtual-buttons on a touchscreen, and that aspect – “one controller that becomes ALL CONTROLLERS!” – will be central to the marketing.
Osama bin Laden is dead.
FUCK YEAH!
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 