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Wii's Face-Sucking Profiles |
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Awhile back, Shigeru Miyamoto commented on the game Wii Sports and its ability to use a player's face and apply it to three-dimensional characters in the game, creating a personal experience. He also hinted on the ability to transfer these characters into other games.Well, in a recent interview with Katsuya Eguchi, a designer at Nintendo, more information on the subject was revealed. It has been known that the Wii will be able to store separate gamer's profiles meaning that every person in a household can have a different customization options for the console. The 3-D characters with a gamer's will be stored on their profile. This means that the custom character information will be stored in the hardware of the Wii, not the games itself.
Still confused? The Wii will store pictures of a player's face. It is logical to assume that the pictures can be transfered through SD cards or other forms of portable media.
After the photos are finished and stored on a player's profile, any compadible Wii game will be able to pull the images from the hardware and apply them to a 3-D model. This means you could see yourself pop-up in a video game at any time!
This is by no means an original idea for Nintendo. In fact, four years ago at E3 2002, it was revealed that the GameEye would be released for the GameBoy Advance. As a sort of sequel to the GameBoy Camera, it would take color photos and print them through an external device. However, the most innovative and curious feature of the device was its ability to transfer photos to the Nintendo GameCube through the Link Cable. The player could then put photos of his or her face onto characters in the game. An example of such a game, Stage Debut, is pictured right. Sadly, the device nor the game have never saw the light of day.
Sounds like Nintendo is trying to revive the idea with the Wii. This time, however, there won't have to be a GameBoy Advance to do the job.
Now, for the full interview...
Wired News: With the graphic design, is there a reason for having it as simple as it is?
Katsuya Eguchi: Sure, there are games that require more sophisticated graphics. But there are also titles that require more simplified graphics. Our priority with Wii Sports isn't graphics; what we were trying to show through these games is how the controllers works, how sensitive it is. Our goal wasn't to create a realistic baseball game with real-world pro athletes, it was to create soemthing familiar, something that isn't intimidating, something that anyone in the family would be comfortable pickign up and trying out themselves. That's why we went with the simpler graphics.
Also as you saw in the media briefing, you saw Iwata, Miyamoto, and Reggie playing tennis. we are looking to implement a similar kind of editing feature into the hardware that will allow users to create caricatures of themselves, members of the family, people they would potentially play with. and so when they go to play tennis, those would be the faces in the game. a more sophisticated graphic look wouldn't match well with the caricatures, but a simpler one does.
Wired News: So the feature would be in the hardware and then applied to, potentially, any gameÂ…
Katsuya Eguchi: Yes. The caricatures will exist in the hardware, as data, as one of several profiles that you could save in the Wii. And if you insert compatible software into the Wii, it will pull up the images that you chose.
Wired News: What would be some of the other profiles you could save in the Wii, then?
Katsuya Eguchi: The other details that will be saved as a part of the user profiles are as yet undecided, but right now we're focusing on creating an editing tool that will allow players to create images as well as allow users to select one of several already-created images, if they're not artistically inclined.
Wired News: This sounds like something that would be very useful for Animal Crossing, especially with multiple profiles.
Katsuya Eguchi: In Animal Crossing the player has the ability to wear different hats, different masks, different accessories. So we're not sure if the caricatures would be something that would work for Animal Crossing. So that is still under consideration. Besides Wii Sports there are a variety of applications that could use the caricatures, and we will explore those.
Via Wired News
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Wow, I should really work on my analogies...
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