Blog Report: November 11th

The Official U.S. Playstation Blog
70’s Mustang Joins the Gran Turismo 5 Lineup at the Gran Turismo Awards
Alex Armour // Manager, Public Relations
November 6th, 2009
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/11/70s-mustang-joins-the-gran-turismo-5-lineup-at-the-gran-turismo-awards/

A love for cars, trucks and SUVs is the motivating force behind the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA). About 7 years ago, Polyphony Digital and their hit game Gran Turismo teamed up with SEMA to hold a secondary awards ceremony tied into the SEMA auto show, called the Gran Turismo Awards. To understand why this is at least an expert's judge of performance, Gran Turismo’s pedigree lies in the facts that they are the benchmark against which all other racing games are currently judged. Back to the real cars, the contestants are from five different categories and will be judged by Kazunori Yamauchi, creator of Gran Turismo and resident car nerd. He will judge each vehicles appearance and history. Then, once each winner is evaluated, the best in show is chosen, who will have the privilege of their car being featured in game. Due to the long development process, the past two winners will also feature their car in game. So, currently leading into the release of Gran Turismo 5, there are going to be 3 award winners featured from the past 3 SEMA shows; an Audi TT, Infiniti G37 and 70’s Ford Mustang Transcammer. It is good for these two communities to share promotion of each other's efforts. SEMA puts emphasis and supports the auto tuning community and of course the majority of gamers who purchase GT 5 support that community. Using a cross promotional event such as this can only benefit both companies. Congrats to the most recent winner Phil Koenan, I can’t wait to take that Mustang out on the track.

Set on stun
Flashback — The Atari Mindlink
Shawn Deena
09/08/09
http://setonstun.com/2009/11/flashback-the-atari-mindlink/

Technology is continuing to evolve at an ever present rate, but our imagination tends to cause humans to get ahead of the current applications in technology. Take for instance the Atari Mindlink, a monumental failure adverted by Atari, the Mindlink was meant to eliminate the need of a controller. Instead, it seemed to just bring upon headaches as users tried to move their eyebrows across infrared sensors to control games such as; Pong, Bionic Breakthrough and Mind Maze. Although the product was never released, it’s interesting to see what people thought was the solution to the problem 25 years ago and where we have come to find this solution now. If you look at the Wii it is one step towards no longer having buttons to control a game. Microsoft hopes to take this even further by eliminating any sort of controller at all. Instead of using your mind (or rather your brow), the device codenamed NATAL uses a stereoscopic 3D camera to capture the movement of the user. This translates into a form of hands off approach to gaming. Based on the recent test runs, it looks to be a success in waiting, but only time will tell since it will inevitably be released. Hopefully when they release the mock up for the device, they won’t mention how it “increases computer and game system intent to purchase”. I think something like this should be designed around the intention for increasing immersion, sales will come