Voice recognition for MMORPG (in place of typing messages to players) -- text output as a bubble and/or chat log mechanism.

When things get busy, players have little opportunity to type in msgs to coordinate a group players. (and for people who cant type one handed, they constantly have to keep moving hand back and forth to the mouse as well)

They could fo this today if they wanted to (you can do a decent VR with ~200Mhz
(a small portion of todays CPUs).

I relly wonder why games havent adopted it yet.


Of course voice activated modes/commands/etc could be activated as well, but keyboard/mouse is more precise.

As cool as the 3d virtual headset would be I don't see it as being feasible for at least 10 years or more. Its a shame though, it would be awesome to play a game with a helmet that senses your head and body movement and surrounds your field of vision with the game. It would make FPS' much more appealing.

Hey Madster, what kind of things could you do with a gyroscope controller? Would the character and/or his weapon move in sync with the player?

Replacing Mouse and Keyboard with HOTAS confoirmat controls:
That's just replacing a generalized system with a specialized system.

Touchscreens (and touchpads) :
Definately a good idea to push in the console market as there is a serious lack of fine control. They can also be integrated into gamepads more easily than a trackball. Still, they will add a cost to the controllers, but I think the march of console FPS games just might be the killer apps for them.

Voice Control / Command / Communication:
Voice communication is still a bit too infantile. Nuisances may be dealt with, but the inconvenice is high.
Speech-to-text is still is a bit rocky, imo.
Voice commands tend to work well, I've noticed. Coupled with text-to-speech, it allows for a fairly clear method of communication that is relatively easy to use. The downside is that players will undoubtedly want to creat their own commands, a semi-burden and an opening for nusisences. However, this method also uses a very small ammount of bandwidth, making it dial-up friendly. The depersonaliation factor can be a positive or a negative.

VR helms:
Ugh.... no, please. People get zoned out enough with headphones and digital audio players. I've noticed that my own GBA can be about as bad, at times. A total immersion is just asking for a plethora of problems.

Camera Control:
This seems like a good route, even though it is plagued with recognition problems in the typical "bad actor lighting" of many living rooms. I'm glad to see the player being taken off of the screen and merely put in control. It relieves a lot of the awkwardness of looking at a "video mirror" as well as allowing for much more immersive games. Hopefully this technology isn't just a fad, as it seems to be a lot more intuitive, if less precise, than the usual gamepad.

I agree that controllers will probably not change much except for wireless connection as the standard controller, but I think (and hope) that peripherals will take the innovation to the next level, implementing 3d movement by the player. The Onimusha sword controller was a brave attempt.