The potential for turning mobile gaming into something that works well on the TV still exists, and a new app from India’s Rolocule games might help turn that potential into something people actually want to play. The Motion Tennis Cast title from Rolocule is available now, letting you use the game on a big screen via Chromecast, while also employing your Android smartphone as a motion controller.
What’s even cooler, potentially, is that Rolocule says it has a working prototype that uses an Android Wear smartwatch as the motion controller, meaning you’ll get Wii-style interaction with something you’re already wearing on your wrist anyway.
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This isn’t Rolocule’s first rodeo: The game maker has been working on motion-controlled games that pair the small screen and the big screen for a while now. We covered the launch of Motion Tennis for iPhone and Apple TV back in 2013, when it arrived on the App Store, and now Google’s expanded Play tools for using Android smartphones as control input for Cast-ready software have made this new version possible.
Rolocule has three games on iOS that use the smartphone motion control tech already, and the company’s co-founder Anuj Tandon tells TechCrunch that it’s going to target the Apple Watch as the next development platform to see if it could also serve as an input means that lets you walk up and start using Wii-style gameplay without even taking a phone out of your pocket. That will depend on whether it works with the tools Apple has made available to third-party developers on its new platform, but it’s still a very interesting concept.
Two-screen gaming has always seemed like a promising area for mobile platforms and the set-top boxes and streamer devices they work with, but Rolocule’s use of the tech might make the most sense, in terms of offering as little friction as possible for players looking to get in the game. If smartwatch use becomes more widespread, and the device on your wrist is already instantly a motion-based means of input, then that greatly lessens a key barrier to getting in the game.
Motion Tennis Cast is a free download, with in-app purchases, and also works with Chrome browsers, and smart TVs with Mieracast or AllShareCast support in addition to Chromecast.