Smell your games. Good idea, or good reason it's failed so many times?

I am not sure how this could work out for the people who live with the player.

Video images are pretty non-intrusive - if they annoy you, just dont look at the screen. For sound/music, the player could put headphones and annoy no one but himself. I have a hard time imagining some sort of headphones for the nose to limit the sensory input to the player only. And i definitely won't dare wearing anything that comes to my mind.

And yeah, I'm sure your SO would go nuts at the smell of burnt flesh and gasoline coming out of the gadget box waay faster than at the faint sound coming out of the headset.

I imagine there's a chicken-and-egg phenomenon at work here - until there are a number of games with scents the gadget won't attract a large number of gamers, and until it attracts a large number of gamers there won't be incentive for a number of game developers to add scents.

If / When it works as a business, it will likely involve some kind of key relationship with a large distributor of either games or gamers. If Microsoft said 'the Kinect rocked, and the next thing we're doing is launching ScentScape' it would motivate developers; if Blizzard said 'we're adding ScentScape capability to the next WoW release' then a lot of gamers would go buy it.

Launching it independently of either channel is difficult.

I don't believe anyone will make smell-immersion practical without sending direct input into the olfactory nerves.

There reaches a point in virtual reality where increased realism becomes undesirable. In my opinion, smell-o-vision is that point.

"What's that smell?" isn't a great start to a conversation about a neat new gadget that you just bought.

Interesting stuff, but I'm pretty sure I already know what my games smell like, and it ain't flowers.

Wario Ware: Smell Ya Later!

Though by the looks of him I don't think I want to smell Wario.

I think this could add a lot for immersion, but there are a lot of problems with the scent medium. It's your body detecting particles, not waves. Particles linger, so it's not like the smell's going to go away.

Say you're in a burning village in a game, and the ScentScape releases burnt-carbon molecules. Wow, a real burning village! I'm immersed! Then you ride your FantasyHorse to the next kingdom to warn their king of the impending attack. Except the burnt-carbon's still in the air, and you get this weird mix of regal smell and burnt village smell.

I really think they'll have to use a different mechanism for this to work - a small mask, perhaps. Or perhaps timed-Febreze particles.