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Coolest Game Controller Around? Novint Falcon

Techstination feature for Friday, May 2, 2008

The coolest game controller around might not be from Nintendo. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. It's a game controller….designed for PCs….that's unlike any other. The Falcon Joystick from Novint Technologies adds the sense of touch. CEO Tom Anderson..

"Novint originally was based on technology that spun out of Sandia National Laboratories. And Sandia is one of the U.S. government's biggest laboratories, about 2 and a half billion dollars in research each year. And the field that Novint's working in and what we were working on originally at Sandia before we spun the technology out, was haptics and 3D touch. So what our technology lets you do is use a really accurate sense of touch in a computer."

The device is a robotic pod of sorts….and it's not cheap …about two hundred dollars. What Novint needs to succeed…is the cooperation of game makers….for titles to take advantage of the technology. And the biggest game maker of all, Electronic Arts, has agreed to sell the 3D touch rights for its titles to Novint…. so games like Madden Football and Tiger Woods Golf…will be available for the controller.

"EA and a majority of top 20 publishers we've been talking to…I think within the next few months, we could have a really impressive lineup of games that are coming up. Dozens of triple A games."

The way it works is Novint is creating its own version of the games that it will sell to owners of the Falcon controllers. Work is underway on the first group of EA titles now. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.