Whatever happened to the Nintendo Interactive Floor?

[Flare]

Does anyone remember a Nintendo demo from years ago where they dressed up an area of the E3 conference floor as a Zelda dungeon and they had this really cool (for the time) interactive floor?

Whatever happened to that? That was before the Wii was out. I remember some people were speculating that this was perhaps what the Revolution was about.

Nintendo even filed a patent for it (http://wii.nintendolife.com/news/2006/01/patented_nintendo_floor_vision) in 2006 and they called "Floor Vision".

Remember this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-r9FnQcT1g

This suddenly came into memory this weekend after my family and I went to Old Navy and they had this new "toy" at the store. It's the same thing, a projected screen on the floor that when you touch it has an effect on it. This one had different games like Soccer, Basketball, Hockey, Golf as well as glass breaking, water effect and popping balloons.

I took a picture of my kids playing with this. check it out:

http://imgur.com/O5TNy.jpg

Also, here's someone else's video of it:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGcMB68VAg

That Old Navy screen is pretty good since it does keep the kids entertained by the grown-ups do their shopping.

But I wonder. Is Nintendo behind this? is this their technology?

[Leathco]

I think Nintendo abandoned it due to the cost it would take to make a good quality unit mass produced. The Wii came along from the fact that motion controls got really, really cheap to do. Beleive it or not, there was discussion early in the Wii development to make it a touch screen based system after the runaway success of the DS.

I think it MIGHT be more cost efficient now than it was than, but I wouldn't develop a whole system around it. I think it'd make a great periphial add-on or used as a single standalone games.