Yours truly was in Finland most of last week, visiting a bunch of technology startups at their offices, paying a visit to Nokia’s research center and attending the great MindTrek conference (thanks again for organizing the tour, FinnFacts).
One of the items in the packed schedule was a visit to the Demola facilities, essentially a type of incubator where students from the three universities in the city of Tampere and beyond can come work on projects in an ‘open innovation environment’.
One of the demos there that made a lasting impression on me – and the other bloggers who were invited to the tour – came from startup Ball-it. The fledgling company markets a golfball-sized device that is able to interact with your computer, TV or mobile phone thanks to physical wireless sensing technology that was popularized in large part by the Nintendo Wii gaming console. The technology has been under development for quite a while; tech blog Venturebeat profiled Ball-it about 10 months ago.
As a game controller, the little ball makes most sense to me. Since it detects things like rotation, direction movements, squeezing, tapping and reaction speed, there are loads of gestures that you can make wielding the ball trigger an on-screen activity, as you can see in the video(s) below. I only tried it for two of the games that have been developed for the device so far, but it was intuitive enough for me to get the hang of what I was supposed to do in just a few seconds. It was also loads of fun.
I specifically liked the fact that you can place the ball in your pants pockets, after which the device will be able to detect your running speed, how high you jump, and more to control elements of basic sports games. Besides doubling as a pedometer, it also measures how many calories you burn so you can use to improve your fitness, too.
Ball-it aims to be able to distribute the device in the near future for 15 or 16 euros (approx. $22) the price of an average PC game and actually includes six basic PC games in the same box. Additional games can be purchased from the company’s web shop, which it evidently refers to as an app store.
Also check out the review and video over on ChipChick.com.
this is awesome. the video was great I can’t wait for the track n field games like back in the day
meh, looks like something that would get boring very fast.
It reminds me of the FitBit gadget.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/tc50-fitbit-fitness-gadget-the-makes-us-want-to-exercise/
Just a small correction, the ball will be priced the same as your average PC game, ie in Finland that means that the ball + 6 games will be between 50-60 euros (games are expensive in Finland). In the US the price will be similar to the average selling price of PC games, ie quite a bit cheaper than the 50-60 euros, guess the price for a good PC games is something like 49 dollars nowadays.
@igor The games don’t get boring very fast + there’s also an appstore for more games, so you can always get new ones if you get bored. Lots of people also thought the Wii would be a fad, but seems like it’s only now slowing down. And the ball is much more accurate than the Wiimote anyway.
obviously heard that wrong, thanks, fixed now :)
Cool. Thanks! There should be some more ball news pretty soon…
It looks very cool, and the price tag of 50-60 € vs 199 € for the Wii sounds very attractive. It’s something that I would give as a christmas present for example.
Good luck guys, hope to see soon this product.
maybe in the next few weeks…
Robin this video is great! Except for the fact that it’s starring my chin
This looks so cool. The only thing I would be worried about, is loosing the ball somewhere. It’s so small lol.
OK, that is cool. Price point is on the fence, could go either way on this one. Gift, no brainer!
i can see the ideas swirling around in the heads of designers now…iphone mashup
Yes, the iPhone has bluetooth, so some fun things that can be done with that and the ball. An iPhone with balls, how cool is that;-)
There are already some mobile java and Symbian games for the ball in the labs. Combine that with TV out and you have a Wii in your pocket… and the latest mobile phones have as much processing power and accelerated graphics too, so that should get a few more ideas swirling.
Amazaing .. for sure I m going to try this .. must be very interesting ..
Cheers,
Daina
A very cool device but just doesn’t round right when an if someone would say ‘give me the ball!’ .
Plus it is coming in cheap added with those games too.
Sardar,
So many jokes you can make about balls that it’s not even difficult;-) Fun to market this kind of products.
and yes, has to be competitive on price when you are a startup without a huge brand or massive distribution to start with. Plus that is the console model anyways, like it or not, have to play the game.
“We’ve got the biggest balls of them all!” – AC/DC
Sorry, had to get my innuendo reference in. I love tech like this. I hope they get a Windows based SDK out for the ball ASAP (if not the hackers out there will get to it soon enough). Then I can control my robots with it, like I do with my WiiMote.
AC/DC know their stuff. And the Windows SDK was announced in December 2007, just didn’t make a whole lot of noise about it back then except for a small notice on the web site:
http://www.ball-it.com/newsGameSDK.html
This is all about developers, just needed to have something inspirational to show first.