Video.

This is really, really hot shit. I've been party to many discussions of how joysticks just plain suck for first-person shooters, and many informal brainstorm sessions discussing possibilities of how to provide the speed and accuracy of a mouse when the user is sitting on a couch rather than in front of a desk. Nintendo has trumped all of our feeble ideas with an earth-shattering “duh.”

The controller is hardly limited to shooters; it knows both its position and orientation, giving you 3 linear and 3 rotational axes to play around with. Some possibilities are described in the article, and I'm sure there are plenty more cooking behind the scenes. My only regret is that the Revolution isn't going to see the third-party support it deserves.

This is why Nintendo must be a hardware company as well as a software company. Nobody does the interesting parts of either one nearly as well.