Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/author/ben-kuchera/) reports that “[...] The Parrot AR.Drone made waves when it was shown off CES earlier this year. The WiFi quadricopter that uses an iPhone as its remote control will launch in the US this September, for $299.99. You can control the device using an iPhone, iPod touch, or an iPad, and the drone has both a downward- and frontward-facing camera. [...] ” on top of this, a software will be provided, that “[...] is open, and testers have enjoyed prerelease access to both the SDK and hardware to get their games and demos up to speed, making this a fun project for those who like to play as well as those who like to tinker. At launch, there will be two $2.99 games available from the App Store to try. [...]” (full article at http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/06/parrot-ardrone-to-attack-this-september-for-300.ars)

Either if you judge $300 a reasonable price or not, this is the first step into the future for us loving flying (real or virtual).

I think the fact of having a flying high quality and feature rich platform to be customized with a SDK is one of the keys to succeed in this kind of developments.

The only real problems are space, (because everyone loves seeing what your drone does, but, definitely is not something you can play in your house) and batteries (because this will impact the overall use of the gadget).

This post as a comment also at http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/06/parrot-ardrone-to-attack-this-september-for-300.ars?comments=1&p=20512296#comment-20512296