An Idea...

So one of my last posts was about the Nintendo Revolution and its new control scheme. Nintendo always says it wants to branch out to new market areas. What if they introduced the Revolution to unconventional markets, such as the health care industry? Yeah yeah, the mantra has been that it's for gamers, but a motion-detection control setup like the Revolution could have a great impact on more than just the gaming industry.

I'll take the field of psychology for example. One of the most common psychological cases are anxiety disorders, of which a great deal are phobias. Virtual reality technology has been used in clinical settings to help treat people with disorders such as Aracnophobia (fear of spiders), Acrophobia (fear of heights), and even social phobias. It has shown to be successful in treatment, even with disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, not all anxiety clinicians can afford to shell out the high price of VR equipment, being around $6000.

With Nintendo's new gizmo, programmers can design clinician-specific treatment programs that utilize the motion detection and rumble sensation features of the Revolution 'remote'. And since the system is geared towards the broader household market, it won't cost clinicians thousands of dollars to use it in practice. Let's take a patient that has aracnophobia. A scene could be generated in which a spider is present. The remote controls a virtual 'hand' on the screen. The object is allow the spider to climb onto your hand for a certain length of time. The controller can be kept out of view from the client, so all they see is the image on the screen. The rumble sensation of the controller could be used to generate a touch sensation when the spider climbs onto the 'hand'. Granted, this is all theoretical and there is the disadvantage of not attaining the same level of immersion that a VR set gives. But if tested, and if it seems to work, the application of Nintendo's new tech could branch out into other medical professions and beyond, into other fields.

It's a possibility...