GDC Podcast: 'Novint President Tom Anderson'GDC Podcast: 'Novint President Tom Anderson'

Gamasutra is proud to present the latest in the special GDC interview series of our regular podcasts, which include both the Tom Kim-presented Gamasutra Podcast show, alongside the best lectures, tutorials, and roundtables from this and previous years' Game Developers Conferences. For today's edition of the Gamasutra Podcast we feature an interview with Tom Anderson, president and CEO of Novint Technologies. Novint's most recent push into the gaming space has come in the form of the Novint Falcon 3D touch feedback device, new hardware that the company calls "a small robot which lets users feel weight, shape, texture, dimension, dynamics and force effects when playing enabled games." Using the Falcon, Novint says, "players experience a full range of realistic touch sensations that allow them to control a game more naturally and intuitively." In the course of our conversation, Anderson talks about the upcoming commercial launch of the Falcon, arguing that the device is a platform rather than a peripheral, and says why he thinks it will fundamentally change how people interact with the PCs, and possibly even their next-gen game consoles. Anderson also discusses the differences between the Falcon and other specialized gaming peripherals that have come before, and why Novint has chosen to pursue the gaming market as opposed to other business where they could just as easily apply their technology. You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast, Interview with Tom Anderson (.MP3, 13 minutes, 6 MB). In addition, you can subscribe to the Gamasutra podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.