toys – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

October 14, 2020

Nintendo’s new remote-control toy brings real Mario Kart races home

Game action on Switch steers cars round obstacle courses you create in your living room

Mario Kart has been a family favourite since the early 1990s thanks to its potent combination of cute characters, speedy but simple racing and an array of red shells, banana skins and other eye-wateringly unfair tools of playful sabotage. Nintendo’s latest experiment in the toy world, made in collaboration with Velan Studios, is an actual Mario remote-controlled kart that comes with a game. Instead of confining all the action to a screen, this lets you race a little car around your living room, using a Nintendo Switch to control it.

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is a “mixed-reality” game, meaning that what you see on the Switch screen is an enhanced version of what’s actually going on in your living room. In reality, the car is zipping around on the floor, weaving between table legs and under cardboard arches. On the screen are all the things you’d expect from Mario Kart: power-ups, sandstorms that blow the kart around and make it harder to control, and other characters to race against.

Parents, look at it this way: if the kids want to play Mario Kart Live, then the floor has to be clear. That's some incentive to tidy up

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit will be available October 16; £99.99.

October 14, 2020

Nintendo’s new remote-control toy brings real Mario Kart races home

Game action on Switch steers cars round obstacle courses you create in your living room

Parents, look at it this way: if the kids want to play Mario Kart Live, then the floor has to be clear. That's some incentive to tidy up

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit will be available October 16; £99.99.

October 14, 2020

Nintendo’s new remote-control toy brings real Mario Kart races home

Game action on Switch steers cars round obstacle courses you create in your living room

December 20, 2019

Last minute tech Christmas gift ideas for every budget

Left it a bit late? Here’s a quick list of good tech things for people of all ages

Lego Hidden Side – £25

October 10, 2018

Adorable robotic murder-machine Bastion is the first ‘Overwatch’ Lego set

Bastion, the robotic defensive powerhouse from Overwatch, will be the first character turned into a Lego set. We also know that Tracer is on the way and it appears several other characters are coming, too.

The post Adorable robotic murder-machine Bastion is the first ‘Overwatch’ Lego set appeared first on Digital Trends.

October 2, 2018

From Xbox to plastic blocks: ‘Overwatch’ is leaping into Lego sets

Overwatch will be getting its own Lego sets. Blizzard made the announcement alongside a video of a small Tracer mini-figure that came to life in front of game director Jeff Kaplan.

The post From Xbox to plastic blocks: ‘Overwatch’ is leaping into Lego sets appeared first on Digital Trends.

July 10, 2018

All 151 original Pokémon are now being turned into plush toys

The Pokémon Company is turning all 151 original Kanto-region Pokémon into plush toys, with the first batch scheduled to release on July 13. The plush toys are palm-sized and will cost about $10 each.

The post All 151 original Pokémon are now being turned into plush toys appeared first on Digital Trends.

August 24, 2017

Smart Toys, how AR and IoT are changing kids’ education

Childhood is the most important stage in the life of human beings when it comes to cognitive and creative development and toys are among the most important tools kids have at their disposal for stimulating their minds.
These objects, which come in different shapes, sizes and with different purposes, are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, leveraging the advancements in technology.

The result is a completely new market space defined as “Smart Toys”, a market which is at the intersection of the traditional toys industry and the innovative gaming industry, as stated by Jay Wright, president and general manager of Vuforia.
In general a smart toy is an object which consists of a traditional toy with the addition of an app, a display or other connected elements, enabling interaction and communication capabilities.

The Global Smart Toys Market

The global Toys market closed the year 2016 with a strong growth and a market value of over 90 billion dollars, according to the NPD Group and the International Council of Toy Industries (ICTI).

smart-toys-how-ar-and-iot-are-changing-kids-education-2

Source: Juniper Research

While the Smart Toys market is estimated to be worth 4.9 billion dollars in 2017, it is forecasted to grow up to 15.5 billion dollars by 2022, according to Juniper Research. An impressive growth rate!
These numbers clearly lead us to believe that there will be a strong interest both from the demand and from the the supply side, as increasingly more players are investing in this market.

Why are Smart Toys different?

Smart Toys allow to completely renew the playing experience in many different ways. There are Smart Toys created for entertainment and Smart Toys created with the educational purpose in mind. The latter category includes STEM-oriented toys. STEM, is an acronym for “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics”.

An increasing number of companies and startups are devoting themselves to the creation of STEM Smart Toys and there seems to be a strong demand from the market. SmartGurlz is one of such cases, it is a toy for helping girls learn to code in a very original way and it is one of the best selling toys in this category.

In general Smart Toys come into the form of puzzles, books, AR cards or cubes and even robot-like characters and drones. Technologies like sensors and Augmented Reality help kids to improve the interaction with the toys and provide a better understanding of concepts and shapes, which is very useful in subjects like geography, the animal kingdom, sports and sciences.

The Key Players in the Market

At the fantastic growth rates this market is exhibiting, it is not surprising that it is becoming a crowded area which includes startups like SmartGurlz, Reach Robotics and Sphero; smaller companies like Popar Toys, Crayola and Parrot; large corporations which have made a successful transition to digital toys, like LEGO, Disney, Mattel and Fisher-Price, just to mention some of the leaders.

January 23, 2017

Dad Uses Vive To Turn Daughter’s Toy Dollhouse Into Virtual Dream Home

There’s Honey, I Shrunk The Kids but have you seen its obscure sequel, “Honey, I Used State Of The Art VR Technology To Turn Our Child’s Dollhouse Into a Virtual Dream Home”?

Okay, that movie doesn’t really exist, thank god, but HTC Vive owner Toby Newman did recently use his headset to do just that. Thinking outside the toy box, Newman took 360 degree images of his daughter’s dollhouse with the dolls inside set up in different poses. He then got the images running on his Vive and let his daughter take a look. You can see her exploring the house as if she were really standing inside it below.

She seems pretty convinced by it. For those wondering, Newman also posted the images he used.

For anyone thinking about doing the same thing, this same concept could pretty easily be achieved on mobile-based headsets like Google Cardboard and Gear VR too. You don’t even need the 360 camera Newman has used here; Google has a Cardboard Camera Android app that allows you to take 360 degree images with standard smartphone cameras, though the best results do come from native solutions.

It’s a pretty charming and inventive use of 360 degree images that we hadn’t considered before, and it gets us thinking about how the concept could be taken a few steps further. Imagine using true VR to bring toys your kids own to life, or letting them explore interactive, realistic versions of the worlds they dream up when playing.

It could be VR’s answer to the popular toys-to-life genre of games like Skylanders or Lego Dimensions. There’s undoubtedly a big market for VR there once it comes down in price a little.

That’s a little harder and takes considerably more effort than simply taking 360 degree pictures, of course, but this offers a glimpse of the way kids could be spending play time in the future. Imagine a real life Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. The horror.

Tagged with: 360 degrees, dollhouse, toys

August 13, 2012

Parsing Reality: Shaping Play with Connected Stuff, SXSW 2013

RomoDoodleDemo from Romotive on Vimeo.

We’ve submitted a panel proposal for SXSW 2013 on a super interesting topic, “Parsing Reality: Shaping Play with Connected Stuff.” The voting opened today so please do vote – go here to vote, if you would like to see us at SXSW 2013!

How clouds & atoms are coming together to make everyday things, and our actual lives, a platform for games.

The hardware startup community is on fire with kickstarter and a vibrant meetup community energizing the space. Smartphones opened the door for playful social, local experiences based on our actual lives. Now we are seeing connected stuff – hardware, cloud-connected devices, and robots bringing new forms of personal awareness into the mix. This panel will be a chance to hear from a group of people who are already deep into transforming this opportunity space into new genre of playful experiences.

The panel will be myself, Dave Bisceglia, co-founder of the mobile gaming company, The Tap Lab, and Phu Nguyen, who leads Romotive’s software team to create new experiences with robots that harness the power and extensibility of the smart phone, and Adam Wilson, co-founder and chief software architect, Orbotix – the makers of Sphero, the world’s first robotic ball gaming system.

Our panel will look at how our actual lives and everyday stuff are becoming the most interesting platform for games. Â We’ll discuss, from different perspectives, the ways games are shaping our experience of a new blended digital subjective/object space. Portables, wearables, and connected stuff mean bits and networks are everywhere we go, giving us the possibility of a new deep awareness of our personal state. As Will Wright says, “we are at a turning point for mobile gaming, a shift for games from being about simulating reality to being about parsing reality.”Â Sensors everywhere and advances likeÂ bluetooth smart are turning everyday objects into an opportunity for play. The future of our playful sociality is “toys” that are a customization of our interactions with the actual world and everyday life. We will explore how games, robots, and playful experiences are the key to makingÂ our new habitat of digital/physical complexity more accessible and fun.

Questions we’ll discuss will include:

What are the specific experiences of panel members in rising to this challenge?

The iphone and ipad are becoming the narrative and play control center for connected stuff. Desktop, files, folders, trashcans and lists were key metaphors that made the PC the master control center for sharing of information. What are the new metaphors for a Game OS for everyday life and connected stuff?

How is next generation connectivity like bluetooth smart going to change our attitudes to the playful potentials of toys and physical stuff? We’ll show some examples of what’s out there today and what’s coming soon.

What can simulation games teach us about the challenges of parsing reality and making it more playful and interesting? We’ll explore how this new paradigm has transformed game design while introducing new game mechanics along with interesting technical challenges.

What are the challenges for startups wanting to make apps / products for a connected playful digital/physical world? Our panelists have all experienced this first-hand and will share their stories as well as answer questions from the crowd.