1) Augmented Reality Games (card and otherwise). With all the work going toward making models of mechs and other assets, why not revive the MW/BT customizable card games - with a twist? Augmented reality is quickly becoming realized in everyday devices. The 3DS, for instance, has AR cards that - when viewed through the system - can display animated models. The game Kid Icarus: Uprising will also launch alongside a customizable card game. You put down a few cards and watch them do battle.
Why not do the same for MWO? The models and animations are already going to be made, it'll just be a matter of making cards and a viewer/simple stat tracker program. It's true that MWO's models will be well beyond what most augmented reality-enabled devices can handle, but disabling lighting, bump-mapping, and lowering texture resolution could be enough when combined with the fact that only a few assets would be displayed at any one time. LOD models could alternatively be used.
Microsoft may have issues with a MW card game being made available for the 3DS, but Nintendo isn't really their direct competition anyway, and they've come close to cooperating before (Halo DS, for instance. I think they also cooperated during the 32/64 era a bit). There are also other devices that probably could do it, like iOS or Android devices. This could possibly not be limited to a card game; CBT could possibly be done this way, as well.
2) Another possibility of course is personalized, special-order figures. I think EA did this for a while with Spore. 3D printers are becoming more affordable now, and with higher quality. Of course, you'd want something higher quality and more automated than a RepRap, but there are probably some tens-of-thousands-of-dollar models that could pay themselves off in no time. BattleTech fans would probably not mind painting them by hand, either (if no good automated method could be found). You could sell them as a larger model AND a mini for use in CBT.
Anyone have any other ideas?
Edited by Knightcrawler, 02 November 2011 - 04:47 AM.