SmartStylus planned for DSi
You might have heard a little about the SmartStylus last week -- PDP was showing it off at the Game Developers Conference on the Expo floor, inviting gamers and developers to try out the oversized accessory.
The SmartStylus communicates with an RF transceiver plugged into a DS's GBA slot, and will rumble or flash LEDs on its base, reacting to your performance in a compatible game. A second version is in the works with a "more sophisticated RF link", as well as audio features and motion input capabilities with a 3-axis accelerometer.
I played a few demonstration levels with the first model, one of which asked players to pop balloons, shaking the accessory whenever the wrong balloons were touched. Another more interesting stage challenged players to guide the tip of the stylus through a maze with their eyes closed; the SmartStylus would rumble, whenever a wall was hit. None of the games seemed like "killer applications", but I can see some potential in the accessory.
That potential wouldn't mean much if the SmartStylus doesn't work with Nintendo's new system due to its reliance on the GBA slot, but I talked to PDP for a hot second, and they told me that the transceiver is small enough to fit into a standard DS cart, a solution they're currently investigating.
The stylus uses a single AAA battery and is currently pending Nintendo approval. PDP adds that SmartStylus effects are "easily inserted into [any] game by using simple APIs provided in the SmartStylus SDK from PDP."
