Forget button-mashing or Wiimote-waggling; The future of gaming is all in your head

The Tokyo Game Show in Japan wrapped up last Sunday, leaving in its wake a a record 879 new titles and updates designed to please pretty much everyone.

Nintendo is a perennial no-show at TGS, but that didn’t stop developers from debuting a slew of games for the DS. In fact, the number of DS games debuted topped the list of titles for any platform. Perhaps not surprisingly, the next strongest showing was for mobile phone games.

Despite this year’s lame theme, “Ready for GAME time” (I guess the title “Tokyo *Game* Show” was deemed confusing to some), the show proved to be a battleground, and it was clear from the start that Microsoft was ready for a fight.

The Xbox 360 is a distant third in terms of overall sales in the Japanese market, having sold 750,000 consoles to the PS3 and wii’s 2.4 million and 6.9 million, respectively. However, in September 08, Xbox outsold the PS3 for the first time, thanks in part to Microsoft’s addition of more Japanese game designers. Microsoft used that momentum to try and make an even bigger splash at TGS, announcing services like Netflix and showcasing the new 360 Dashboard.

All we want to do is eat your brains…

But by far, my favourite announcement of the weekend came from Square Enix and California-Based NeuroSky, who debuted (finally) Judecca, a zombie-thriller adventure that you control with your mind via the NeuroSky “MindSet” headset.

The technical demonstration developed with Square Enix operates in conjunction with Windows PC machines and features the NeuroSky commercial headset, MindSet™. The recently introduced MindSet is capable of interfacing to a variety of gaming platforms, including PC, console and mobile. It resembles a pair of headphones, with a single electrode contacting the user’s forehead while reading the player’s brainwave information, or EEG data. The headset registers the current state of relaxation or concentration of players, allowing them to perform a variety of actions within the game. (press release)

Amidst all the hoopla, it seems easy to forget that the MindSet is hardly new, nor is it unique. Having been first announced as being in development in 2005, the MindSet bears a striking (and simplified) resemblance to the EmotivEPOC headset, a rival device that has been in production for just as long as NeuroSky’s device and promises to do the very same thing. It is, of course, missing one key ingredient: Partnership with a major game developer.

While the Wii encouraged gamers to get off the couch and become more active, the Mindset has the potential to remove physical activity of any kind from the equation entirely. This may mean that the MindSet has come along at just the right time; that being, the time when people have figured out that Wiimote waggling is simply another form of button-mashing and really doesn’t require getting off the couch in any capacity. Maybe that’s what people really want. Of course, no matter how cool the technology is, if the gameplay is dull or the story is lame, no amount of future-tech will make it worth playing.

Have we learned nothing from SegaScope 3-D?

The MindSet will be making its way into stores by early 2009.

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