Nintendo continues to ride the wave of new innovation aka Wii-volution, (the Wii was originally codenamed Revolution, talk about naming it right). At the recent revamped E3, Nintendo announced the Balance Board, to be bundled with WiiFit.

Picture from joystiq.com

I am somewhat disappointed, I expected it to be bigger, hold on to your proverbial horses for a second and hear me out. Nintendo has the opportunity to create the most popular peripheral ever for a console (outside the regular controller lineup). In most type of combat games, I always thought immersion could be enhanced by carrying out the motion, your stance, movement of the feet. (I do concede on the movement being mapped to a controller is beyond anything affordable for consumer market in the near future).

Anyone remembers ‘Die Another Day’ when James played/took the Virtual Reality training scenario, I have been imagining something like since I was about 14. (I just realise thats 11 years ago, starting to feel old at 25)

Imagine playing games whereby your body motion is a major part of the controller in a combat game, be it ducking bullets or ducking swords. Anyway if it was bigger, it would enable developers to at least explore and try to implement gameplay involving changing stances, body postures and using the Wii Remote/Wiimote as your weapon. It could still do that in its current size, but in this case slightly bigger means a bigger range of motion, something that Nintendo would not be able to rectify once they decided on its final specifications. When the balance board takes off, it would be the final nail of the coffin of this round of the console wars, hopefully it would make the games industry as a whole more innovative.

And for the record, I will still buy it in its current form.