Game innovations at GDC 09

[ music ] ^m00:00:05 >> We're here at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to give you a glimpse of some of the new innovations coming in gaming this year. ^m00:00:12 [ game sounds ] ^m00:00:17 When I fire the missiles, I can feel an explosion and vibration on the rumble pad. I also see the lighting behind the screen, and if I crash the plane or hit something, there's a huge explosion, bright lighting, and a vibration as well as air effects. >> Playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band or something like that, you can turn your room into the rock stadium with the LED lights that will play with the game as you play. >> What do you need in terms of hardware to make it work? >> Simple hardware such as peripheral lights and accessories for your console or your PC. You can add to it and there will be a range of products coming out within the next few months, from other vendors here in the U. S., Europe, and the rest of the world. >> Game difficulty has been adjusted to your brain wave and concentration levels. >> So essentially we build a headset that has an additional sensor that touches your forehead, and that reads the brain waves. We then filter out and clean up the signal we hear, and we incorporate that into the game using attention and meditation algorithms. >> I think it's pretty fun. I think it has a lot of potential, but it's a little hard to get used to right now I think. ^m00:01:30 >> It was kind of peculiar because during the calibration part, it just activated... effortlessly but then actually during the game play I had a hard time. >> What we're showing here is... an optical solution for facial expression capture. It's designed to be a low cost solution for... to do vocals, cut scenes, basically get a realistic facial reconstruction for games and movies. ^m00:02:01 [ music ] ^m00:02:05 >> On this side we're showing full body motion capture, which is our natural points arena product, and something to really note here is it's a real low cost product. Now you'll see it, instead of hand animated motions and games, you'll just find motion capture finding it's way into even small production games. And it really kind of enriches the game experience. ^m00:02:29 >> So I've seen enough innovations here at the Game Developers Conference. The question is whether they'll be big hits considering the economic downturn, when people have less money to spend on entertainment. From the Moscone Center in San Francisco, this is Eric Palm for CNET News. ^m00:02:44 [ music ]