I'm baffled really. This thread probably isn't specific to Capcom, but given the Unity boards unique position in relaying ideas and opinions through to Capcom, perhaps this is a place where ideas can count for something.

As to why I'm baffled, Elebits is the answer.

I keep saying it again and again, but if you look at what Psi ops did last gen and see what Elebits did on Wii you should be seeing this physics based object manipulation in virtually all FPS or 3rd person wii games. Force unleashed and Harry potter 5 omitting IR and physics based gameplay is raw stupidness.

It's like no developer has even heard or played Elebits and seen what it's technologically doing. Has anyone at Capcom played this game and if so, has no one been inspired by its design?

That's what annoys me so much, a launch game with an obvious mechanic that can yield so much potential is being completely ignored. Only Boom Blox uses similar mechanics. It can be incorporated into so many regular hardcore games though and not just puzzle games. Psi Ops and to a lesser extent, Second Sight are blatant proof of concept too.

But basically virtually any game can use the physics manipulation of Elebits. You have a controller that gives you acceleration info, positional info, allows you to rotate or throw objects with your own heft, has you using actual depth to pull and push things into and out of the screen. It gives you an absurd amount of control when coupled with a physics engine.

Take that mechanic, give your character in an action game some superpower and have him throw stuffaround. In a Resident evil game you could pick up crates and hurl them at zombies. Or pluck off a zombies head.

In Star Wars Force unleashed you could ping pong storm troopers off eachother, or solve environmental puzzles. In a first person game you could investigate a scene by picking apart its components. Actually in a resident evil game, actually sifting through the contents of a mansion in the first person would be much more fun than walking towards a glowing file and pressing a button.

So why is Elebits and its game mechanics so special?

It really has a very rewarding, eye opening revolutionary control mechanic. It feels like direct interaction with the gameworld. Previously looking at footage I thought it could be approximated on PC, but after playing it, no. This could not be done on PC. It really uses the Wii controller as a 3-D mouse to give you really fine control over your enviroment and is completely beyond a dual stick controller. Once you've plucked through a couple of missions you find yourself doing really crazy things, zipping through levels, using complex interactions within the game world.

It actually uses the wii controller to sense depth so you will find yourself pulling and pushing items in and out of the screen, rotating objects and this isn't some random gesture control, it's fine tuned and accurate and very satisfying. You can actually fling items into the air and then catch them mid air in a delicious juggling act. I found myself lifting up a microwave, stacking it on boxes, flipping open the door, grabbing a pizza, feeding it into the box then turning it on, all the while zapping elebits at the same time. To put its control in some perspective, you can actually feed a CD into the slot of a disc shredder, in a 3-D space with no camera assistance, plane switching or automatic button pressing.

Once you get further into the game it becomes a lot more complex, items have to be used in order or activated through different ways like a puzzle, elebits become harder to find, your gun has to be powered up to lift heavier objects, you wrap your head around the power-ups which are really neat, either luring, shocking or deafening the little beasts, you have limitations like not causing noise (careful with those pot lids) and not breaking things (watch out for the vases) And of course rooting through the environment causing chaos never gets tired.

Almost everything in the environment can be manipulated with a fine degree of control, talk about design depth.  

 What's startling about Elebits is how it's game design in one fell swoop shows what a controller can offer to gameplay as opposed to the traditional view of what other hardware related performance upgrades can offer. Both approaches have benefits the other doesn't IMO. The makers of Psi-ops playing this game would have a field day with the mechanics, it makes the gravity gun in Half Life 2 look like a blunt instrument.

So please, if there is any justice, Capcom will take a hard look at the mechnics of this game and use them in a future title.

Seeing as I'm was one of the guys on the greenlight committee that approved production for Psi-ops at Midway... I get the value of physics and material properties, and the emergent mechanics that can come from them. I wish more people "got it" because it sold horribly even though the media mostly respecting it for what it was. From a shareholder perspective, I should also be blamed as one of the people who greenlit it.

That said, I found Elebits to be cute, somewhat clever but otherwise unremarkable.

Also Loaded man, IGN in their interview with the producer of Elebits asked...

IGN: Is the hardware as easy to use on the Wii as it was with the GameCube? The two systems are very similar is structure we're told.

Konami: Yes, the structure is very similar to GameCube, but you already knew that. The development was not that difficult, as the Wii system has built in physics simulation. That helped the process.

I bought Psi Ops and second sight and throughly enjoyed them, Psi Ops in particular. However I think the relative weak sales performance had less to do with the gameplay and physics as a tool and more to do with the fact that they were new IPs. Using the physics interaction of Elebits (which is a whole generation above anything seen in HL2 or Psi Ops), you could introduce the mechanic into established franchises, for example the Force Unleashed or Harry Potter examples, or your own stuff like Resident Evil. In fact Umbrella Chronicles could have greatly benefited from it.

You could given the lead character a P-Virus or whatever that would give them a special power. Using that power you could for instance click on a zombie's leg, up-end him and throw him into the crowd, or smash him against a wall etc. Or picked up a chair and smashed it into him. Or thrown him through a window. Imagine the possibilties for solving environmental puzzles?

In RE4 you have to walk up to a bookshelf, push A and rigidly push said shelf to block a door. With elebits style control you can point, click and drag said object where you want it in an instant.

This is an area where the Wii has an obvious, instant and definite advantage. Having this kind of tech in your game is something that will push the game into good favour with journalists and gamers alike.

Well, I think there's a few factors you haven't considered. The RE games you mentioned didn't have a physics engine at all, and it isn't exactly a small task to add that kind of technology to an existing engine. And there's the other problems of controls and related gameplay. If it had been added to RE:UC then it might have collided with the controls as they're used for shooting 99% of the time (not to mention some of your examples would be really hard to implement from a code perspective). In RE4 it would have made more sense from a controls perspective as you only use the wiimote for aiming, but would it really improve the game that much? And there's the other problem of how to implement it properly, if your crosshair moves objects around it would look completely silly compared to Leon doing it manually.

Another thing to consider is that the Wii isn't exactly a powerful machine. Sure, Elebits had some impressive physics but that's ALL the game was. And the physics was really off a lot of the time.

If you're interested in Elebits-esque controls you might wanna check out Penumbra on the PC, I've seen some trailers of it and it seems to have the same type of physics manipulation plus a bunch of puzzles based on that concept.

Sorry I was just using those titles as examples. I dont mean that they should be retro fitted with the controls and physics. Just  that for example they could create the next new resident evil game with those mechanics in mind that would improve the experience.

Elebits has a quick combination of shooting and manipulating objects, it even uses the same button for both and no problem picking things up. There are also literally hundreds of tiny elebits to shoot and a ton of objects to throw around and there are no control problems at all.

As for a RE4 style game, what I mean is that the character would be given some sort of fictional telekinesis power to manipulate the environment like in Psi Ops.

As I mentione in my previous post, Elebits is throwing around literally over 400 objects at the same time in some areas. I never found the physics to be off, just the slowdown was a problem. However it was a launch game that wasn't optimized.

An adventure game or FPS would not have the need for hundreds and hundreds of maniputable objects like Elebits does. In the outdoor areas you would be looking at having enemies and some descructable objects. In the indoor areas, if elebits is any example you can really let things fly.