one - drivebys with the katana on the motorcyle.
two - google maps for gta 4, with street view. tag all the pigeons, stunts jumps, weapon locations, and etc, make them easy to find and thereby acquire. allow customization, hooked into your profile, such that you can see what you’ve acquired, what you haven’t, where you earned achievements, died, got arrested, and etc.
ideally this would be linked up with all your virtually geo-tagged screenshots taken with your in-game cameraphone that you purchased on the in-game internet which is where you go to access this whole thing.
three - integrate a wii style sensor bar into all tvs, and give actual tv remotes wiimote functionality. motion sensitivity, a numeric keypad, a high-quality d-pad, four buttons surrounding the d-pad, and a trigger. (stealing the wii-motes best tricks is the entire point here).
in ‘watch’ mode, the d-pad is your primary functionality. left and right to change channels, up and down to change volume. there can be a mute button up and to one side, mirroring the power button. there is also a ‘clear’ button which will automatically hide all messages and interface widgets. (alternatively, all widgets or pop-ups will have an ‘x’ close button you can point at and shoot.)
the four context buttons around the d-pad access everything else. for this example we’re assuming an up down left right placement, extending the cross of the dpad in all directions. naturally you could also put them in the corners for a more compact arrangement.
up is menu, which pops up a point-and-click or d-pad navigable interface with all your standard tv options, dvr options, plus motion sensitivity settings and other cruft.
left is volume, which pops up a volume slider on the right of the screen that you can click or drag. there’s a ‘mute’ button at the bottom, and a button at the top to quick-access the volume settings menu, for bass, surround, and etc.
down button is navigation, which pops up a mediaplayer style progress bar along the bottom of the screen, click or drag as you will. while in navigation mode, the d-pad and trigger change functions; hit clear at any time to return to ‘watch’ mode, or simply hit navigation again.
the trigger becomes play/pause, while left and right on the dpad become rewind and fast forward; tap repeatedly to increase speed. these functions are also represented by buttons on either side of the progress bar. here you can also use the numerical pad to input and jump to a specific time.
up and down on the dpad become jump forward and jump backward. hold up or down and pull the trigger to toggle jump settings: ten seconds, thirty seconds, one minute, two minutes, or chapter markers. (jumping more than two minutes at a time can be easily accomplished by just clicking on the progress bar.)
the right button switches into ‘tuner’ mode. the display pans back to reveal a 3d wheel made up of three rows of tiny televisions, which display all the available channels. you can grab the wheel and turn it, and click on a channel to zoom in on whatever looks exciting.
press tuner again, and you pan back from the master wheel to reveal smaller, single tier, ‘favorite’ wheels. drag-and-drop channels from the master wheel to a favorite selection for each user, or sort channels by content. when zoomed into one of the smaller wheels, navigation will be restricted to the channels in that wheel. this makes it extraordinarily easy to password protect everything except a family friendly ‘guest’ wheel, containing only channels you’ve selected.
while in the master/favorites view, press tuner a third time to pan back and access pay-per-view, stored media content, the internets, and attached devices like dvrs, dvd players, game systems, and roomba, the robotic floor vac, now in hd! (where available)
