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Sony Ordered to Pay For Dual Shock Tech
GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that a ruling against the Japanese software giant has been handed down in the case of Immersion vs. Sony. Immersion sued the company over the force feedback effect experienced in the dual-shock controller, which it has a patent on. From the article: "Now a Californian district court has ordered Sony to pay a 1.37 per cent license fee based on sales of the PlayStation console and of the named videogames, to be paid quarterly effective from July 1st."
Anybody think they will just ditch the technology in the next Playstation?
to which aspects this refers?
I wonder what effect this will have on the sale of women's "Adult Toys"?
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Bite Me Fanboy!!
Also, weren't there questions the last time this made Slashdot about the validity of Immersion's patents? Prior art in the N64's rumble pack or something? I don't recall. Also, did Immersion ever do anything with the idea, or just get a patent and sit around waiting for market saturation of the feature?
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Nintendo was probably the first to market with a rumble device, with the release of Star Fox 64 in 1997. The articles say the lawsuits are over force feedback, which could mean many things. The technical term would be some form of variable resistance applied to the joystick or something, but rumble features are often considered "force feedback." The PS2 has pressure sensative face buttons, which could cause one to contemplate. The Immersion website seems to promote the rumble aspect of force feedback, so clearly Nintendo could be liable.
Immersion's gone after the other big two (sucessfully), is Nintendo next? Perhaps, but Nintendo's no slouch when it comes to patents themselves, and perhaps Immersion doesn't wish to lose their own patent viability in a court battle with Nintendo. I wonder, if the Immersion and Nintendo patents are similar, if Nintendo can sue for damages and a share of the wealth...
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xBox already settled with Immersion to the tune of $26 million
m mersion/2100-1041_3-5056455.html
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+settles+suit+with+I
http://www.tomandemily.com
I find it more annoying than anything, and I generally turn off vibration.
It depends on how it's used. If it just shakes when something blows up, big whoop. But it can be used to communicate various things to the player better than just visual and audio cues in some cases. I can immediately come up with three games that used vibration to good effect in different ways.
In F-Zero X for the N64, the rhythm of the pulses told you how well you were sticking to the track. Actually being able to feel the track beneath you made it easier to use slides and maintain control through difficult turns.
In Rogue Leader for the Gamecube, there was so much green laser fire flying around that it was sometimes hard to tell whether you were actually being hit, but the controller shook every time you were. Sure, sound effects clued you in as well, but I always noticed and reacted to the shaking first, almost reflexively.
In the Wind Waker, the opportunity for a counterattack was marked by both an icon on screen and a quick thump of the controller. I almost always nailed the timing because I felt the controller vibrate well before I noticed the icon. Plus, I never needed to actually watch for the icon, so I could concentrate on the action.
I think the key is that the rumble should be subtle enough that you don't really think about it during gameplay any more than you think about what you see and hear. If it shakes enough for you to notice, it can only be a distraction that pulls you out of the experience.
... and Nintendo has patented rumble before Immersion has.
I've compared the patents the last time something relating to Immersion was posted, Immersion has patents for all kinds of variations of controllers (e.g. a controller with two analog sticks and two rumble motors as seen here, a joystick with rumble, etc) but Nintendo holds the patent for rumble with a single unit in a gamepad or something like that. Immersion's patents even reference Nintendo's patents for prior art but claim that because they cover different input devices they aren't conflicting with N's earlier patents. I'd call that a trivial step up but whatever.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I dug up these three patents that Immersion Corp apparently holds: 6,366,273 6,271,833 6,184,868.
:P
I think that something this simple really shouldn't be given a patent. But since it has, I think I'll patent "audio notification of consumable liquid boiling point" and charge all tea kettle manufacturers exorbitant licensing fees
PS: This is not a seriously researched opinion, IANAL, etc.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
It's 1.37%, so for every $100 Sony makes off of the stuff they're getting sued over, they must hand over 1 dollar and 37 cents to Immersion.
According the article, this is about $27 million a year.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
One of the niftiest things I picked up on while setting up my home theater were some bass shakers. Once set up correctly it causes your chair or entire couch to rumble along with your subwoofer. All you need is a cheap pair of transducers (speaker core without the cone) like the Aura Bass shakers ($30ish a pair) and a cheap amp to drive them ($50 or so if not free. Preferably one that has an output level control for tweeking the amount of shaking). Attach them securely to the framework of the seat and split your linelevel subwoofer output to feed both the sub and the amp for the shakers. The sub output will only send low frequency signals so you don't have to worry about the couch shaking during dialog or other higher frequences.
t hreadid=330436/.
There's a huge thread about it at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
Good link, but apparently you didn't read it. It says that Logitech has licensed technology that will be used in a steering wheel controller which will come out for Gamecube. The article has nothing to do with Nintendo or first party gamecube controllers.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?