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My jaw....has just dropped. Nintendo, you just got served. Johnny Lee, my proverbial hat goes off to you. | |
Wow I didn't know he was a Carnegie Mellon grad student. Makes me wonder what he did before he made those videos and after he graduated from CM. How old is Lee anyway? | |
Nintendo %^&* we dropped the ball and MS stole it scored a touch down and banged the head cheerleader and home coming queen at the same time. | |
I'm glad to see he finally got hired somewhere. I've really wondered why Nintendo didn't do anything with this guy. | |
Maybe they tried, but lets be honest, he was ahead of Nintendo -- with their own technology. I'm betting they simply didn't have anything to offer him that looked as interesting as Natal. | |
Haha, I remember seeing one of his videos almost a year ago and thinking. "Somebody needs to hire him fast." Looks like I wasn't the only one. | |
I was VERY skeptical of Natal untill just about now. | |
Looks like Nintendo got beaten to the punch. So far, I had been more supportive of Sony's motion sensing efforts, while assuming Natal would just be an Eye Toy, but although I still prefer Sony's, I could see myself getting tided over to Natal if Microsoft can pull it off. | |
So what you're saying is, Microsoft got HIV and herpes. That doesn't seem to be the case, but whatever you say... Anyway, bad move Nintendo for not kidnapping this dude and making him work on whatever evil plots they have in mind. | |
but but but the wii is going to have a gyro! and the ps3 magic wands!... ok fine. | |
Nice to see his work appreciated by a company that needs better programmers. | |
Well, if some guy I've never heard of says Project Natal is going to work, that's all I needed to hear. Seriously. o_0 | |
The guys at MicroSoft have clearly made the right choice. Nintendo is, lets face it, going down the drain, well the Wii certainly is. At least Microsoft has definetly made should a big mark on the world that this guy will certainly not be sacked in a hurry. I just hope he won't be subjected to recreating the Xbox360 with Wii remote capabilities. | |
Nintendo seems to be making a lot of bad decisions lately. "Some guy reverse engineered our controllers to make interactive motion recognition controls the likes of which we don't appear to ever be on track to develop ourselves? Pfft, let Microsoft have him." | |
Hm. Some hope for Natal after all. | |
You know what? I was skeptical about Natal working for games. Now, I find myself actually enthused. | |
Nice work Microsoft. Nintendo will throw an absolute fucking fit about this, the guy's obviously an expert in the field of their main product, and one of their main rivals just stole him. I don't know if they've got better guys working on staff, or if they just dropped the ball, but Nintendo is seriously losing it. | |
Nintendo, why didn't you hire this guy? He could have made your controller good for things other than pointing and very simple shakes. But you let Microsoft take him, skipping a great chance to get back the "hardcores" and shake the image of your console being a cheap gimmick. | |
Wow, Natal has just got a lot more interesting. Good for this guy, and a big "FUCK YOU!" to Nintendo. | |
Smooth move, Microsoft. Smooth move. | |
Usually stuff like this excites me. However, I can't seem to grasp what he'll bring to the table. Unless he's done something else and hasn't shown it, what he's done is what Sony did at their conference. Of course, he probably knows more about that sort of thing than he let off, which is cool beans. I just don't see his use in what Natal is. | |
LOL, you people think... Nintendo didn't hire this guy because they are stupid? Sorry, but Nintendo is the smartest gaming company this gen, anything they do is for good reason and overall M$ and $ony are pretty much walking into their trap. Nintendo is a Japanese company, MS isn't (the guy looks like an Asian American, how the hell is that going to help a Japanese company?). Nintendo comes ups and creates dozens ideas but most of them don't see the day of light for good reason, you guys are ignorant idiots if you actually think Nintendo hasn't seen this. They MADE the technology, they KNOW all the power is in the wiimote, they know their system inside out... Thinking that this one guy on youtube is smarter then the whole company and that no one from Nintendo saw one youtube video is BEYOND stupid. They have good reason for this, and TBH from a business P.O.V. they don't need... There are SO many possibilities for why Nintendo isn't working on this technology or isn't showing it.... First, you have to be REALLY close to your TV to get any REAL benefit from seeing objects in 3D. And other examples... Secondly, this is messes with 3d so much the processing power for COMPLEX games (not those simple things on a youtube example) would most likely be through the roof (just think about all the dimensions that need to be processed)... And lastly, Nintendo could use something like this later as an ace-in-the-hole against M$ and $ony for all we know. I was able to think of those few examples in a few seconds yet so many people can't even think to why Nintendo might or might not do stuff? Seriously, the stupidity here is amazing. Grow brains people. | |
Nintendo would have tried to arrest the bugger instead of employ him. Nintendo should consider this a wake up call; they have missed a HUGE opportunity. | |
*giggle* | |
Yes it is funny, someone is still able to make a stupid post straight after mine. Gratz to Johnny Lee anyway, but I don't expect him to keep his job after M$ makes cut backs once this thing fails. M$ is failing to understand what Nintendo is doing, they are the 'Birdmen'. | |
Now, see? They needed this guy on stage at E3, not that windbag Molyneux. So instead of saying, "Um, ok? Why am I supposed to believe this is an amazing piece of technology and not some carefully choreographed CG video?" I'd be saying, "Ahhhh, so that's how it works! Now that makes sense!" | |
I agree. Every time Peter speaks, a kitten dies. | |
They're a company like every other, and they make their mis-steps like any other. Do the words "Virtual Boy" ring a bell? The Wii was a great move, no question. It was also a couple years ago.
Who said they think Nintendo hasn't seen this? As for your racism, I have no words. Perhaps you don't realize that Nintendo has an American division.
Ah. You mean like Bill Gates, who made MS-DOS, knew the system inside and out, which is why he limited DOS to 640k. He knew nobody would need more than that. And yeah, I firmly believe one guy can be smarter than a whole company, because at the end of the day all a company is is a collection of people, and when you track the bright ideas back, sooner or later you find they originated in the mind of some individual person in the company.
Well.. they could have, but you see, they have no patent on it, and without a patent if there's ever an argument, it goes in favor of the guy who first demonstrated the product. And guess what, MS just hired that guy -- so you can bet they'll have a patent on it in the next couple weeks. And oddly, processing power doesn't seem to be a problem for Microsoft's Xbox 360 or even their Natal. Can we really say that about the Wii?
And the level of thought you put into them is clear.
Fixed. | |
So, they are smart because they didn't incorporate any of what this guy showed in his videos two years ago why? The guy knows his stuff and did a wonderful job manipulating it, and Natal looks a lot less "fiddly" then using those nasty Wii remotes.Honestly it takes awhile to be able to keep that thing perfectly straight, and use it accurately. Sure, complex games probably won't use this but who says they are gonna use it for ALL games? I HIGHLY doubt Nintendo invented motion sensing, seeing as those motion detectors have been around for ages. If Nintendo was so "amazing" to make their sensing better, then it would be easier to control and graphics would be better. It is like saying Apple had a trap planned for Microsoft when they stole their technology......and then stole over 95% of the market.....and the trap comes....when? This even though it looks a little skeptical, really looks interesting, instead of PS3's Wii remote (oh sorry I mean Magical Wand!) and the AMAZING technology that the Wii has brought along. A real step to better motion sensing, not the shaky remotes but using your actual body. You may call me stupid but.... explain to me how "They have good reason for this" seeing as they are being left in the dust by their own selling point for the Wii, MOTION SENSING!!!! "yet so many people can't even think to why Nintendo might or might not do stuff?" Lack of money? Developers to lazy? Not worth the effort to improve their technology vastly? Any of those insane reasons make any sense to you? I am done flaming you because I was disgusted at how you flamed everyone else. I don't think Nintendo is a little ninja waiting to slit the competitions throats when they think they are ahead. They seem more of a "lets produce this because we can! Mario Party XXXI!!!! With mildy improved graphics, and the same games as XVI!!! Sounds fun and it will sell!" They probably don't care because of the DSi....... | |
High five for flaming the same guy! | |
Fixed. Also, this is awesome. My expectations for Natal just jumped a few notches. | |
You ignored all my points on why they couldn't have hired him, why? And I never stated Nintendo was prefect.
Well, that was one of my reasons why they didn't hire him, as well as knowing what their console could do anyway. So obviously your brain cannot connect, "oh he's saying that to give a reason to why Nintendo didn't hire him". And lol? Racist? Are you serious? I'm a European Australian (I must be a racist for calling myself European!!). Calling someone who's blood line comes from Asia an Asian, how is that raciest? Wow, sorry but are you jsut being an idiot on purpose just to confuse me? American division, sure, mostly for marketing for NA and/or translating and stuff like that. When it comes to the hardware specifics pretty much all the work is done in Japan. What are they going to do with him in America? Unlike M$ who's whole base of operations is in North America.
Wow, you really are an idiot aren't you? I stated Nintendo knowing their stuff in reaction to people thinking Mr Lee knew Nintendo's system better then they did, which is idiot thinking... But not as idiot as you seem to be sir.
Firstly, you are still confused about my whole post. Secondly, what Lee could do with the Wii in his video is very different to what Natal is doing mostly. Sure Natal could track your head and you could see in an imitation 3d, but overall it isn't viable (see below). Thirdly, no one actually knows what Natal processing power is like and what it needs, so you assuming that 360 can do everything Natal captures is jumping the gun a bit... But overall, yes 360 has better processing power then the Wii, but that wouldn't matter that much in the market since Nintendo would already have a new bag of goodies in store by the time this has finished development. Otherwise, any insults aimmed at me are funny considering your inability to work out what I was talking about (a.k.a. all what I stated in my first post was in reply to people thinking Nintendo were stupid and wondering why Nintendo didn't follow what Lee did on Youtube).
Again, Natal is completely different to what Lee did in his video. Sure, Natal could track your head movement and show 3d through that... But overall only ever work in one player contexts and I point out the basic problems in my first post, sure a guy on youtube can make a simple demo of it, but past that it gets a lot more complex (e.g. processing power required [imagine running a game like RE5 WHILE having these 3d effects on, the 360 would explode, you'd only ever be able to have basic games that get boring after 5 minutes of watching 3d on your TV screen], it is FAR from worth it if you don't have a big TV and aren't close to it). Sure, having 3d games whether through Wii or 360 will be great, but currently and for the next 10+ years they'll be nothing more then demos or mini-games (which won't get made anyway because they won't make any money).
Nintendo doesn't create anything. They take ideas, improve upon them and get them out into the mainstream. The 3d capabilities that Lee showed on the video are far from workable atm, sure he might be a tech nerd but saying "I want to see some games Nintendo!" at the end of his video really showed that he is only a tech nerd rather then someone that is capable of complex logic on everything from the market and from what people do in terms of console gaming. Gratz, you can move around your room and get different angles on your TV, but what is that seriously going to do for anyone? Sure, it'll be fun to dodge to your right and then have the objects on screen move like they are real. But.... 1) you need to be the only person in the area... 2) you will have limited space to do it in (you will need a large area for where your 360 is placed)... 3) in the end you are STILL controlled by the centre of the room so the affect of actual movement is EXTREMELY limited... The most this thing can do is mini-games like 1 player boxing. Nintendo no doubt looked into this and probably thought the basic idea was AMAZING, but also saw that it is impossible in our current societies.
Nintendo was hugely limited at the start of this generation. To think that only NOW are the major corporations that have HUGE pools of knowledge in technology are only showing off better stuff now is amazing considering Nintendo is only a gaming company (Sony builds a huge range of hardware, and MS has huge range of divisions in software). Not only that, but these devices are still years away... And these things won't even SELL, Nintendo are making these huge giants do useless stuff when they already have the audience. And by the time they do actually release these things, Nintendo would already have released information about their next development. And yes, this technology is amazing, and Lee I'm sure is a smart guy and it is good that he got hired. But my post was in reaction to people trying to post against Nintendo with stupid reasons with no logical backing.
Left behind in the dust? What? Nintendo knows what MS and Sony are up to, but they don't know what Nintendo is up to. That is all I see here, Nintendo is playing the game well and have the two others by the balls. Nintendo has the cheapest, least impressive technology in mainstream gaming and still kicking arse, how is that 'being left in the dust'??? Technologically you mean? Well like I noted, we don't know what Nintendo is doing, they are the best secret keepers in the game. If their motion sensing was release TODAY, yes, Nintendo would be behind technologically... But they aren't, so yes, you are wrong. Lol, a whole company getting lazy is moronic, what are you... 12? Grow up buddy. And no, those reasons aren't insane, they are just ignorant. And gratz on flaming me(?). Because that is all you could do, your points were worthless and stupid. If you actually think Nintendo just ran into all these money on a sunny day just because of luck, then you are as ignorant as I thought. Keep believing your 12-year-old, 'I don't understand how the world works' crap buddy.
Meh, great minds think a-like, I'm guessing it's the same for idiots too. | |
I think you missed a big point about Lee's new job: that he isn't a game designer and was hired by a company thatpublishes very few first-party games. What MS probably hired Lee for was to fund out just what could be done with Natal when you push it to its limits. This inormation will be used to help developers know what is feasable to develop. I'm convinced that MS hired Lee because they themselves are not quite sure of what Natal can do, and they want a second opinion from someone with experience in the field. I wouldn't expect to see any crazy game ideas come from Lee, but he may be credited with coming up for a new technique for game development. | |
Odd. I quoted every line in your message. So if I missed something, it's probably because you didn't put it in. Perhaps your typing got ahead of your thinking.
Clue in. You just said that Nintendo wouldn't hire a guy who isn't asian. So I assume you're accusing Nintendo of being racist. Either that means you're unaware that they have a North American division, thus obviously no problems with hiring someone not of Japanese descent. Or you hold the racist ideals that people of Japanese descent are racist against those who are not. Or.. I suppose it could be that you simply are incapable of writing out what you're thinking in a coherent manner. This would actually match the problem we had in the first paragraph.
Interesting. Perhaps you've heard of this thing called the internet. It works marvelously for bringing people from far flung nations together. I hear it can even transmit live video.
Ironic, you thinking I'd missed the point of your paragraph when actually you completely missed the point of mine. I used Bill Gates as an example of someone who, it turned out, didn't know his technology as well as people from outside his company.. who eventually developed memory expanders to go well beyond his expectations of what could be done with his technology. Perhaps I was a bit too optimistic in guessing what you'd be able to infer from the fairly obvious example. My error, I should have tried harder to write to the level of my reader.
Apparantly. Perhaps you should put more effort into writing what you actaully mean.
Oh, do try to keep up. Developers received their development kits for Natal during the E3 conference.. ergo, the hardware is ready to go. If Nintendo is going to put together a bag of hardware goodies, they'd best do it soon if they hope to have it out before the third-party developers for MS start putting out actual software for Natal.
Actually, no, that wasn't at all what you stated. It may have been what you meant, but it certainly wasn't what you wrote. This is the problem we're having. As for the insults, had you not felt the need to include insults in your post, you would have received none in return, as, if you'll care to note, any I made relied almost entirely on your previous ones. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a proud Wii owner and supporter, and I don't think any software developers have come anywhere near to tapping the full potential of the wii-mote to date -- and that includes Nintendo. But missing out on hiring innovative thinkers like Lee is part of the reason why. Are his tech-demos whizz bang impressive? Sorta. They're rather small, and crude, like you point out, but they're also revolutionary in that they take things that were possible only through massively expensive systems, and translated them down into a couple hundred bucks. This is where Nintendo needs to be concerned, because if Lee can pull this off on his own, unfunded, with consumer grade parts, think of what he'll be able to do funded by Microsoft and with access to the latest tech money can buy + some tech that money can't. Yeah, Nintendo's done great by marketing a system that meets the needs of the masses at a price point they can afford. Jonny Lee has managed to replicate a system that sells for upwards of five figures regularly (go price out a large multi-touch whiteboard) for just over 200 bucks -- and made it portable in your pocket at the same time. He's managed to put single user 3D into a normal display system for about the same price point, something that previously either simply wasn't done or would tend to invoke eyestrain and nausea. (Oh, and incidentally.. your claims about the amount of processing it would take aren't true. Games like RE5 already make all the calculations about what you see based on your position in the game. Lee's system simply changes that to your actual position in front of the television.) What you don't seem to understand about Lee's work isn't that it's huge, but that it's so amazingly simple and elegant.. that's a hard thing to come by, and it's something that Microsoft, if it wants to hit the mass market, really needs. | |
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Master Wii Hacker Joins Microsoft Ranks
Johnny Lee, the genius modder who gained some YouTube fame for conjuring up hacks like Wiimote head-tracking for VR displays and Wiimote finger tracking, now has a deserved job developing games hardware. But it's not with Nintendo.
When I first saw Johnny Lee's videos on YouTube, the first thing I thought was "this guy has the most Asian name ever." The second thing was "Nintendo needs to hire this guy ASAP."
If Nintendo did actually try to scoop up this former grad student and researcher at all, they clearly didn't act quickly enough. Lee, whose homemade projects in modding the Wii Remote gave rise to hacks of jaw-dropping sophistication like head tracking in virtual reality displays, is now officially a Microsoft employee.
Lee's projects usually focused on tracking motion in real-life with surprising precision on machines, so he'd seem like a natural fit for Nintendo, but maybe even moreso for Microsoft's recently revealed Project Natal. So it makes sense when he writes on his blog that he's now working on how to bring Natal "from the E3 stage to your living room."
Sure, he does have to tow the company line now, but considering this guy was at Carnegie Mellon studying "interface and sensing technology for nearly 10 years," I'd say there's some weight to what Lee says when he declares that Natal is "an astonishing combination of hardware and software."
Lee likens Natal's 3D sensor to "very expensive laser range finding systems but at a tiny fraction of the cost." What really gets him excited, though, are the algorithms Microsoft has developed for interpreting the data read from that sensor, which he claims "are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision" and rival or exceed "anything that I've seen in academic research, never mind a consumer project."
"We would all love to one day have our own personal holodeck," Lee said. "This is a pretty measurable step in that direction."
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