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Warhawk and The Dualshake Controller
You may recall Warhawk from the Sony conference demo, their flagship 'dualshake' controller product. A few of the news sites have gotten their hands on the game, and have impressions of what it's like to use the PS3 controller with the game. From the Gamespy article: "I was initially very skeptical of how this feature (which looked hastily tacked on to a regular joypad without a rumble) would work, but after a lengthy playtest of WarHawk's 30 percent complete single demo stage, I can safely attest to the excellent maneuverable quality possible from the very first moment you pick up and play. The slight delay at the Sony press conference between Phil Harrison's pivoting, and the on-screen tilting of his rendered joypad meant I was expecting the same problems during my WarHawk piloting. Not so. This works flawlessly, and immediately, and allayed any fears I had that this was a last-minute gimmick designed to tear interest away from the Wii."
Now why would anyone possibly think that?
EG: When did you first learn about [the tilt functionality] controller?
Dylan Jobe: We've really known officially for about a week and a half, and we did the final tuning just a couple of days ago.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
They look exactly like the original Dual Shock controller (but in black or silver). In other words: a 10-year old design that looks completely out-of-place when compared to the aesthetics of the console itself.
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
To me, "hastily tacked on" means that the decision to add the feature came late in development and was then added at the last minute.
They found out in the last week or so. See here. They did the tuning in just the last few days.
I highly doubt that they wouldn't've given the controller to them if it had been ready earlier - or if they even knew it was going to work much earlier. This was a "have this work by E3 or else" announcement, and I'm surprised that it works at all.
To be fair, Microsoft's controller (and Sony's new one) used a gyroscope/accelerometer combination to track movement. Nintendo is using RF direction finding to determine the exact position of the controller in space.
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