E3 2012: Rolling the world's first Bluetooth-enabled dice

There's always plenty of sound and fury at E3. But if you look around, you'll always find creativity, sometimes in the most surprising places.

And so it is with DICE+.

It's an interactive, Bluetooth-enabled die that's been created by the Polish company that's the world's #2 player when it comes to traditional dice i.e. dice used by table top RPG players.

The point is that the DICE+ will work with any Bluetooth enabled device, ranging from tablets and smartphones to smart TVs and laptops.

At E3, the company was demonstrating on Android tablets, but that's just because it's easier to get up and running on the platform.

In terms of how the interactivity works, DICE+ itself is pretty smart.

It contains an accelerometer, magnetometer and a proximity sensor so it can tell when it's being held. Indeed, if your roll isn't sufficiently 'rolly' - i.e. you drop or slide the die, the numbers of the face will turn red, and the roll won't be counted.

The inbuilt battery should last for 20 hours and is recharged via a mini-USB port.

What's really important in an interactive die is how it interacts with software.

To demonstrate this, GIC has developed six simple games that required you to roll a die to play. As you rolled, the game received the information about the value of your roll, limiting your options in the game to that value.

Of course, in order for DICE+ to be successful, GIC needs third party developers to support it in their games, so this showing at E3 was to kickstart consumer interest, as well as encouraging developers to sign up for the SDK.

Certainly, with more board and card games - especially hardcore ports from the physical tabletop world - coming to tablets, it seems to be good timing.

But in terms of launch strategy, there are plenty of things yet to be confirmed.

GIC hopes to launch DICE+ in the autumn, with a price of $40 to $50. This will partly depend on the exact specification of the units, as as well as the typical six-sided dice, there could be more complex designs and designs that don't use numbers on their faces.

You can find out more from the DICE+ website.

You can also see how it works in the following video