Touchscreen Technology and the Next Video Game Hardware Generation

Please consider the following pretext to the following article: This is not in any way going to be the main revolution in the next generation and will be but a foot note in the history books, but it's worth writing about now.

So, today something sparked my interest. An article on DIGG about the next generation PSP (and how Sony is denying it).

The next generation PSP is, undoubtedly inevitable even if does undergo an entire rebadge and redesign. such as what happened with Nintendo and the Game Boy franchise evolving into DS. But what I want to talk about is the persistence of touch screen technology.

If Sony does decide to release a technology with a touchscreen, it will likely be beyond what the DS already offers. That is to say capacitive touch with the capability of multiple location tracking (multitouch in Apple-speak).

But a capacitive film over top of an LCD is nothing new. This has been the driving interface behind the iPhone for nearly 3 years now.

Now that industry has enough wealth to R&D the next display technology we can finally hope for OLED to replace the aging dinosaur technology of liquid crystals in suspension on thin films with a piece of reflective film from behind. OLEDs can offer the following two punches:

1) They can be curved over top of any surface. Just Google OLED curved. Sony's got a huge one on display.
Here it is just waiting for hungry, poor investors:



The second techno-advantage is that they can be made to be 100% Transparent or 100% reflective just through design. You can modify tint in an OLED that is completely transparent, but not likely be able to make it completely opaque, but none the less, this is worth noting for technology such as HUD, HMD's (which are going to boom by 2015) and also glass windows with programmable shading and/or advertisements.

What does this mean for the pesky PSP 2 or 3? Well I'm submitting that it will likely take the shape of a most ergonomic design. I currently believe that the X360 controller is the best example of a controller designed with ergonomics in mind.
I never have to put my 360 controller down because of RSI. But that is just a face with buttons, well, replace the face with a curved OLED that features multitouch, maybe also haptic feedback if it can be done and voila a small, but notable change in our portable gaming. The screen becomes the layout for control.

Now apply that to gaming from a couch. These techs could come to the living room in the form of a controller with a programmable button layout. Animations between buttons. This is provided we can control touch sensitivity, otherwise buttons may still reign champion for a few more generations.

What would be after a fully alterable button layout on an curved, ergonomic glowing OLED backdrop?

Likely that same technology that can change shape. Imagine putting a pivot point between both halves of the controller. only putting these points in a number of places. The controllers material would have shape altering properties, so imagine this pivoting controller with all of its hinges covered in silly putty that responds to touch and shape manipulations while also being a display surface.

After that point it will just be done through neuron scan and sophisticated AI algorithms.

Bernie Mac and Sanjay Gupta

Why couldn't Sanjay Gupta die and Bernie Mac live?
Why are you testing us with this?

Everyone on Digg hates this guy because of his disapproving (albeit enlightened) stance on Marijuana use - Time published something I read today. So what if this is a two-and-a-half year old article, it still demonstrates that Sanjay is somewhat disconnected.

But that's not all folks, heres a video of the 'doctor' demonstrating his skills towards a non-materialized career as a circus freak.

And he's in the news. Sanjay, Sanjay, Sanjay...

Bernie Mac died in August and really folks, I still haven't finished mourning him.

In conclusion: Bernie Mac = good
Sanjay Gupta = strange

Skydiving

I think I should go skydiving. Tandem with the SkyDive Toronto company.
I should call them and get a price. They have a winter special on right now that's quite attractive.