It seems that for many years someone at Nintendo has been on somthing to give us alot of very strange, but enjoyable games. Its seems however, that someone, somewhere, at Nintendo has been asked to come up with some new ideas for uses for the Wii remote and accidentaly taken a dobble dose of there meds.

Half of these items (pistol, golfclub, fishing rod) already exist as 3rd party products. I hardly think that puts Nintendo "always one step ahead of third-party peripheral designers". Its possible that Nintendo might find that they are violating someone else's patent?

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

Obligatory YouTube clips:

Finger Tracking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU

Whiteboard application

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ

Head Tracking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

A skateboard? OK, I can see the visor, helmet, and bicycle pedal as useful in some game or another. But a skateboard? That's just stupid.

There's no relative motion between the ground and the wheels, so what's the point? Unless you actually plan to ride the board around the room, which is ridiculous. If you put the controller on the deck, there is relative motion as you can move the deck while still stationary. But the wheels? Someone was asleep at Nintendo.

Nintendo lead where others follow, they only do games and consoles, which other manufacturer can claim to do both so well?

Thought they required you to actually have the invention, as in they can ask to see it?

Patent office should make nintendo show them this stuff before they take the piss out of the patent concept.

I think the Wii remote could be combined with the Linux users who go to the sex aid web site. You can draw your own conclusions about where the remote could go and be used for.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/02/06/hw_linux_users_toy_spend/

Paris Hilton because... well, One Night In Paris (with a Wii remote)

This looks like the original patent for the Wii remote itself. It was filed in April last year. This is not news.

I think not even I can say anything good about this...

-The Coward Wii Apologist

Skateboard with locked wheels, sensors in the trucks and traditional flexible body could make an interesting game. Half the controller for forward movement, the other half sensing flex in the body and trucks. You could do tricks. It would be quite energetic. Some of the skills would translate to a proper ride. You could hurt yourself. All sound quite amusing to me.

take a look into the webcomic "VG Cats". They had a few "interesting" wiimote add on concepts. May be NSFW.

as for gun addons, the Nyko PerfectShot is the best so far. and I'm waiting for the Light Saber add on this fall. I don't want the tennis or baseball bat addons because I'm already swinging hard enough as it is and don't need the extra mass speeding things up.

I've seen those projects and they are extremely cool -- especially the HeadTracking 3-D thing.

It really is hard to believe that after exploring such creative uses of the Wii control, to the point of verging on the ridiculous, Nintendo never even thought of simply reversing the use of the remote and the sensor bar. Such a simple change in concept, yet so effective.

I really wish they build some games using that head tracking concept in the future!

-dZ.

You know, the Audi one....it goes something like "NASA filed 1,578 patents in building the space shuttle, in building the Audi A(whatever), we filed over 6,000"

What it fails to mention is that 5,998 of those were completely f**king pointless patent applications and most probably got turned down.....just like these things, some of which are already in production elsewhere.

It does rather smack of "Well we know we only sell so many consoles because of the "novelty value" of the control system, so how can we extend that novelty?" Either that, or to come up with every possible application of the controller to stop third-party manufacturers cutting into their market.

I'm still waiting for the "strap-on dick" accessory so that someone can release a pornographic game where you get bonus points for the speed and style of your thrust....

Is it just me, or is that gun the old spectrum lightgun from Operation Wolf?

Tom, it looks very similar to the one I remember. Perhaps they will make a new version of Operation Wolf? I'd buy it...

Any kind of board controller (skate, snow, whatever) is utterly useless.

With no momentum to hold you up in the turns, it is a complete hindrance to the gameplay and no immersion results.

The headtracking one has LOADS of mileage though. I have TrackIR for my PC and it utterly rocks. However I feel the wii solution is more body tracking that head tracking - This is only 3 degrees of freedom (Translation), but for console games that would probably be OK. 6 degrees of freedom (Translation and rotation) on 1st person FPS and Flight or driving sims has to be experienced to be believed how much immersion it gives.

For 6DOF you need at least 3 LEDs though, so the wii sensor bar with only 2 can only do 3DOF.

However, it would be trivially easy for nintendo to release a hat with 3 IR sources on it and a holder for the wiimote (to put where you usually put the sensor bar). The easiest way to do this would probably be to imitate the basic TIR package and have an IR transmitter to put pointing at you (say as part of the holder for the wiimote) and a cap with 3 reflectors on it. An active hat with LEDs is another option (which is what I do with my PC), but you would not want that for a wii as you need to be able to jump around, and I think a hat with a battery attached would not work.

I think head / body tracking will see a massive increase in popularity soon, and it should be simple to add to existing consoles (eg like the eye toy for the PS)

Only the JP priority application and a US convention application available on espacenet, and not a sign of the equivalent EP, on espacenet or on the European Register (which would be there in both cases if a European patent application was sought).

The JP priority application (JP20060129732) was filed on 09 May 2006, this appears to be one of the original patent applications(s) for the Wiimote itself, and not a 'new/recent European patent application' for yet 'more housings for the Wiimote'.

This US (for it is a US convention) was only recently published (January 2008, 18 months from the 2006 priority date or thereabouts), which is probably why it's only raised some interest now.

Less sensationalism, more facts please.

Oh man operation wolf on the spectrum aahhhhh was there anything more freaky! why the hell did you end up with a massive white strobe line on the screen when you fired the gun! and the grenades looked like chicken legs, oh that was the best black and yellow game ever.

Rookie with the target shoot was the best although I did quite like that robot attack as well.