I guess it's some sort of augmented reality thing? With a clip-on mirror? (???) And a standard Tangram game?
"For the first time, fun knows no limits." Did somebody redesign zombo.com for the 21st century and try to attach a product to it?
There are so many beautiful product pages out there which completely fail at the basic task of telling people what they're selling. It's baffling.
Its not at all baffling. Selling product is about creating feelings of need for the product, not creating an accurate rational understanding of what the product does. There's a few markets (like marketing development tools to developers -- but, notably, not marketing developing tools to non-developer executives) where those two distinct issues happen to be somewhat (though not perfectly) aligned, but quite often they are unrelated or even opposed.
Video, as a medium, is very good at conveying desired emotional messages, and poor for conveying rational understanding (this is why, for decades, it has been observed that, that is, all other things being equal, watching more TV news makes you understand current events less, unlike consuming news in print media; it is also why video is a prime medium for advertisement.)
Certainly there's a ton of advertising out there that rests on "feeling of need", but it's always for stuff that everybody knows about. That subtle Rolex ad doesn't need to tell you "this device tells you what time it is wherever you go" because everybody already knows what a wristwatch is. Coca-Cola ads can focus on cute animated polar bears instead of "this is a carbonated sweet drink" because everybody knows their product. (Even then, they almost always show people actually drinking the stuff.)
If you have a new product, one that you're saying is different from anything else out there, surely you need to tell people what it is if you want them to think they need it.
After reading their site and watching their video my chief question was whether this thing exists, or if you can preorder it and they'll start thinking about whether it's feasible or not, like many kickstarter-type things.
This is what I came to say. This thing has a limit, and that is that you are tethered to the thing. And as an electronic thing, it is relatively fragile. You can't take it into the sandbox or a snow fort, and you can't get it wet or muddy. It looks a sit-at-a-desk toy, and that's just not a natural state for kids.
When I was a kid (and now that I watch my kids play), we were all over the place (backyard, woods, indoors, basement) and playing with all kinds of non-toys (sticks, rocks, couch-cushion-forts, and on rare & precious occasions a huge cardboard box or section of discarded pegboard) and putting toys together in unexpected ways (matchbox + lego; scraps of lumber + any toy => catapult; does every kid use their bike training wheels to prop up the bike in order to make rooster tails in puddles?).
For $60, I can buy a giant pile of stuff from the hardware store that we can use to make all kinds of "burglar alarms" (rube goldberg machines to ring a bell -- a favorite rainy day activity) that will involve a whole bunch more learning than anything like osmo can provide.
I'm somewhat biased towards being anti-technology, but it's really a bias against technology for technology's sake. This thing may be fun, and if that's what you want, go for it, but I can't really see that it's solving any particular problem per se.
Edit: s/new interaction mode for children/better description/
However, given that I don't understand what it does, perhaps I'm not qualified to say that here.
If it's so clear to you, perhaps you could explain it instead of just making implicit insults?
As for the product not being for me, kids don't buy this stuff themselves. Their parents buy it. As the electronics-happy parent of a small child, I'm pretty sure I'd be right smack in the middle of the target demographic for this product if I had some clue of what it actually did.
I didn't state it in a very friendly way, but that's a different issue.
Setup is a snap. Simply mount Osmo over your iPad's front‑facing camera. Reflective Artificial Intelligence and a built‑in mirror recognize and respond to your every real‑world move.
Then it goes on to describe the available games, and has other key information that's well summarized. I watched the video, and didn't realize you could scroll until I read your comment, and went back to the site a second time.
The bit you quoted raises more questions than it answers. Why is there a mirror? What the hell is "reflective artificial intelligence"? What does it do with the recognition of your real-world moves?
What does it do? The examples are pretty obvious, what more are you looking for?
Arrange tangible puzzle pieces into matching on‑screen shapes.
Be the first to guess and spell out the on‑screen hidden word by tossing down real‑life letters faster than your friends. A related picture gives the clue.
I still don't understand the mirror. iPads have a camera in the back already....
The blue line is an iPad, the red region is the camera line of sight. On the left, you have no mirror, the camera is looking straight ahead at you. On the right, a mirror is attached, it redirects the camera view down to the playing surface.
(I'm not taking sides here on what should or shouldn't be expected on a website.)
I believe the product is, platonically, understandable without a video.
PS: I like misusing the word platonically