Microsoft making their own version of Virtual Boy?

Well, not exactly.

The Virtual Boy projected two monochrome images on twin LED screens. This is more of a RGB projected display - think Minority Report.

It's official, microsoft has jumped the shark. I know the Wiimote was based on the power glove, but the VB and that... abomination aren't even by the same company, so they will probably fail.

I honestly want to see what happens with this. As long as there's less eye strain and it's a bit more comfortable to use than the Virtual Boy, I have hope.

Being a helmet, the second part seems likely.

Would you look silly? Maybe.

edited 20th Mar '12 11:00:17 AM by hnd03

Awesome

Somewhere, Nintendo is laughing and going "Yeah, good luck with that, buddy."

Yes, we all know how the Virtual Boy turned out. But I would be cautious about this, you never know what might happen.

Also, this alone killed any chances of Rare making any Nintendo games again. Previously, they were allowed to make GBA and DS games because Microsoft didn't have a portable system of their own. With this, and Rare's obsession with "the Future of Gaming" (example: Kinect)...

The other problem with the Virtual Boy is that it pretty much completely removed the social part of playing games.

Which this doodad seems to have done nothing to fix.

Looks more like a Virtual Reality helmet than a Virtual Boy, which have been around for a while.

Wasn't the Virtual Boy rushed out of development? Maybe if ol' Gunpei had been given a little more time to finetune it...

It was still a redscale nightmare you had press your face into, and stoop over to even see in it, that cut you off from everyone around you. Giving him more time might have got rid of the stooping problem.

Y'know, I'd sorta expected Nintendo to go for virtual reality first... but actually doing it would require too much setup space and cost too much money by current tech standards.

I'm wondering what exactly Microsoft is planning to do with this, though.

A Virtual Boy type thing today might actually kind of work. But it's Microsoft and I have no faith in them to ever make good anything.

Well I probably wouldn't be able to use it. On top of having glasses, I wear hearing aids, so I would probably not be able to hear anything or have constant feedback.

Actually, yeah, it seems like wearing glasses would make it really annoying.

edited 20th Mar '12 6:14:22 PM by Zendervai

Actually, there are two devices.

One is a helmet. The other is intended to be worn on glasses.

And again, this isn't like the monochromatic virtual boy. This is more like having a virtual HUD.

...Hmmmm.

So it might be possible to play a first person shooter or something along those lines, with the HUD entirely in the helmet? And everyone in the room would be able to see the main screen itself?

...Might not be such a bad idea.

edited 20th Mar '12 8:16:33 PM by Deathonabun

Well, basically, imagine a full-colored image being projected onto a visor, so that it's like a HUD display while you're looking out at the rest of the world. The HUD is 3D, but still just a HUD.