Are Sony and Microsoft vulnerable to being royally thrashed by Nintendo?

Sony patent emotion sensor tech.

 

Your point being?

 

It may not be as far away as you are predicting, a lot can be done with the current tech.

We also have the Wii Vitality sensor coming up, which will provide another type of emotional measurement.

 

Looking at (as much as possible, via 3 links to the original article ) what that patent is attempting, it seems very much to be grand gestures and easily recognisable general facial expressions, similar to the voice recognition I mentioned in a previous post.

However, Shifty specifically mentioned "intricate" and being able to recognise how people are actually feeling. Smiling doesn't always mean happy, just as not smiling doesn't mean unhappiness either. We are a long way, I believe, from facial recognition and AI understanding to use it in a believable way in the entertainment medium. That Sony patent seems to offer nothing more at present than the smoke and mirrors of something like Milo.

Oh, and is my son smiling in this pic?

 

Is he happy?

There's a high probability he is and probability is what any machine (even a human one) can go on.

 

Actually we know enough about this in science, I think. The eyes are a good indicator of almost any emotional state. That doesn't mean that all people know how to do this, though most can if they don't think about it.

The fidelity and speed needed to do it in real-time is still difficult, but I expect our photo-analysis software for sorting people by mood should be getting very good very soon (matter of getting it efficient enough to put it in small devices like cameras).

 

Yes he is smiling and saying "Fuck you dad i just found a way to get out of this box you put me in".

I am not sure what kind of emotions you are on about, of course it´s not some kind of psycho analysis we are talking about.

A lot of emotions are expressed by the body language as well as facial expressions. Every people don´t have the same body language or facial expressions but a lot of reactions can be detected by detecting the delta in said body language and facial expression.

And another input for measuring the state of the gamer is of course how he controls the game, which varies if you are excited, scared, tired, bored etc. and the game can adapt according to that to give a better experience,
Of course it is not 100% accurate but it doesn´t have to be, it´s just a game after all.
This kind of adaptation has been discussed for som time, I wonder what kind of game will be the first to take advantage of it. I expect games like Silent Hill and Heavy Rain to be strong candidates.

Just as an example indirect measurements: Volvos Driver Alert system does not detect if a driver is about to fall a sleep by analyzing the drivers facial expression, but by how he controls the car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb9G9vZ0Tyg

 

In that respect, I dare say most people are a far way from understanding body-language! So expecting computers to manage interpretation that is beyond even the human mind is expecting too much. What should be possible is reading emotional state to a useable degree, which means larger-scale emotional reading. eg. A shout at FIFA is either going to be happy or angry, and those differences should be detecable by computer. Likewise facial expressions for when an offside is called when it clearly wasn't. If a person finds a part of some emotional JRPG to be sad, that should reflect in their face, while someone who's disinterested will have a different expression, and the game could adapt accordingly.

That's what I meant by intricate - not the ability to read subtle tells lika poker shark, but the ability to understand people's feeling on a grand scale where at the moment there is none. yuo may be right about cultural differences, but there's very little I've seen on TV and in films to suggest that people the world over can't all be relied upon to smile when they're happy, or frown when they're confused, or wave their arms wildly when furious.

 

You have some real examples here for gamer face recognition and emotion recognition:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/21/magazine/1194833565213/immersion.html

The face is usually in the clear.

 

If we consider last generation the xbox1 did pretty bad so i think MS has to be very happy this gen as it's head to head with Sony.

Nintendo will never be able to give problems to MS or Sony cuz they just appeal to different kind of users, if you are looking for the best GFX and high definition experience then you buy Xbox360 and PS3 if you are looking for a fun console to play with motion sensor then you buy the Wii man i can't see how nintendo nice sales could damage Microsoft.

 

They wouldn't actually, you're theory would only work if Nintendo didn't have other revenue streams outside of selling console hardware. In reality revenue from handheld hardware/games and console games would lessen the losses you're talking about. Theoretically of course considering what we're talking about would never happen

MS lost about $4 billion, so nowhere near what Nintendo has in the bank (and Nintendo's losses would be lower given the same console hardware losses).

 

The downside is that Wii2 abruptly ends Wii1 which is very risky. It's also doubtful that MS and esp Sony will cede the tween-n-under market again to Nindy.

Still, Nintendo has the ball as long as they don't fumble it.

 

Selling a very powerful next gen hw means selling initially at a loss and i think the big N wants to sell hw at profit so i think next gen they will probably sell an HD capable console but i don't think they will try to compete tech side with MS or Sony...it would not make sense as they created a new philosogpy not based on powerful hw but on gaming innovation and they have been able to appel to the casual gamer...the thing is...some of the people who buy a Wii are people that normally would never buy a console...

 

Actually Nintendo could sell a console that competes with PS3/X360 graphics right now if they wanted to and make a small profit on hardware, however they're making too much of a profit on Wii to release something that makes a smaller profit as well as canablize Wii's profits...

 

Yes but the point was not to compete with the present generation but the next generation of tech from sony and microsoft and unless they both convert to Nintendo's strategy which is unlikely as I see neither willing to cede the best graphics crown to the other like that, will be loss leaders thus needing a loss leader to compete or a none loss leader released later.

 

Well that is an option but right now MS and SONY aren't eating much into Wii's profits? Maybe when Wii price is forced down so low that profits are too small then that would be the right time to release something to compete with PS3/X360?

 

Sorry for crashing the thread so late, but aren't the two of them getting thrashed royally right now?

 

Wii1 != PS2, PS2 had broad Dev support and so could continue after Sony exited to Dev for the PS3. Nintendo IS the market for the Wii and when they leave it collapses, and if they don't by strattling the fence they canabilize the Wii2 market. That is probably the worst possible outcome, an obsoleted Wii with little/no new growth potential and a Wii2 unable to get on track and establish itself as the new IT item because it's hamstrung by continued Nintendo Wii1 support.On top of that your core market, tween-n-unders and soccer moms, are the most fickle and trend concious there is, playing them wrong could be devastating. Wii2 could very easily = GC2.

As crazy as it sounds, Nintendo may be in the worst shape of the 3 going into the next gen. This is mainly because good things happened for them this gen more than things they made happen, so to try to plan to move forward they have to sit back and hope good things for them to continue. I think Sony can in hindsight atest to that being a less than desirable strategy.