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Why Can't Motion and Rumble Get Along?
LifesBlood writes to mention coverage on GameDaily of a contentious controller-related issue. Kaz Hirai, SCEA's president, is claiming there is no rumble in the SIXAXIS controller because of prohibitive cost issues. President of Immersion Corporation Victor Veigas, on the other hand, disagrees. As the company holding the haptic controller rumble patent, he says that the technology could be included for a very reasonable price. From his statements: "If you remember, the day after they announced they were going to take vibration out of their controller I said that we'd be happy to work with them to solve the technical problem, and our engineers in less than a day had come up with three solutions; one is filtering and the other is processing and neither one is incrementally an increase in the cost. Both are using software to filter out the different commands--tilt vs. vibration--so that both can work side by side, and neither solution will add an increase to the cost of the system... We knew how to technically solve their problems and now we know how to do it without adding any incremental cost."
Hirai says they're removing the technology the consumer doesn't really need so they can make it more affordable. That makes perfect sense in context, don't you think?
I think you mean why can't Sony get along with Immersion? Apparently rumble and motion can get a long fine. Doesn't the Wii have both? Even if it doesn't, Immersion seems to have solved that problem.
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Sony decides that including both a motion sensor and a motor would add too much to the cost of an already-too-expensive console, and rumble is out of style anyways. (You don't want rumble in a wireless controller because it's bad for battery life, and the current trend is towards wireless). So rumble is cut from the feature list.
So Immersion Corporation, bitter that they didn't get the contract to design the PS3 controller and sensing an opportunity to gain press, responds by badmouthing Sony. Real professional.
Immersion beat Sony in a rumble patent lawsuit. Sony then removed the rumble from the PS3 controller. Ever since, Immersion has been literally trolling the internet and anybody that'd listen to try to petition Sony to now LICENSE their rumble technology. This merely being the latest example. You got your money, Immersion. You could have settled but you didn't. Now please STFU.
But I cannot stand rumble. Every controller I've ever owned I've turned it off. It's a feature that aggrivates me to no end. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that the lack of this feature will dissappoint, as I know a lot of gamers who prefer having the rumble feature. Though, I'm not sure just how many gamers are turned on by the thought of "tilting" to enhance a game, aside from my 55 year old father who seems to sway this way and that, hold the controller waaaaaaaaay out in front of him and stick his tongue out, like most older people do while trying to navigate through any video game.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
Isn't the guy saying there wouldn't be any extra cost the same one who wants to get paid royalties if they include it? How stupid does he think people are?
Do Immersion's patent royalties count as incremental cost? And how much would they happen to be, anyway?
Too bad Sony does do the same with the PS3 console itself and BluRay. I'm sure that'd save a lot more money than taking a $1 rumble motor out of their controllers. But I guess out of the love in their hearts for us, Sony has made BluRay a required piece of the PS3 and increased the price $200 while reducing the cost of the controllers $5. Thank you Sony, for having my best interests at heart.
I don't really care to hear about it every time the president of Immersion makes some pithy comment about how stupid Sony is for leaving the rumble out of the Playstation controller because he's missing the dumptruck loads of money it would have fetched him. Frankly, I've never been 'immersed' any further in a game because the controller shook in my hands, I've always disabled it, and on the slim chance I purchase a PS3 anytime soon I definitely won't miss it. That said, Sony has made some fantastically ridiculous statements about the rumble feature since deciding they don't want to pay for it, or rather don't want to make their customers pay for it on top of everything else they've crammed in their latest system. I mean, Blu-Ray supposedly adds hundreds of dollars to the unit cost and few gamers have been clamoring for it, but they sure as heck didn't let that stop them from adding it.
I, for one, welcome our new rumble-less overlords.
There have been arguments concerning the "Sony just threw this together" controller stating that Sony had a patent for the tilting technology in the controller many, many years ago. The argument is that Sony couldn't have just copied Nintendo because they had the technology for the controller so long in advance and the functions of the two companies' controllers are vastly different.
For a while, I was willing to accept that argument. I didn't agree with it, my own feeling from watching the Sony E3 conference being that Sony was trying to take some wind out of Nintendo's sails, but I didn't consider it worthwhile to argue against.
However, the shenanigans involving the rumble feature suit and its sudden removal shortly thereafter, while circumstancial, only reinforce the perception that Sony's version of events isn't what they say it is.
I'm not compelled to believe that Sony actually had planned the Sixaxis controller well in advance when it unnecessarily removed a previous key feature, and seemingly mimicked Nintendo's controller. It doesn't help that Sony waffled about what online service they'd have, giving the perception they were only doing it to be able to say, "We have internet gaming too" at Microsoft. It really doesn't help that after ridiculing Microsoft's two separate packages Sony did the same thing. They say they "Don't care" about Microsoft and Nintendo, but all of the circumstances and coincidences tell a different story.
I'm not against the Sixaxis controller and I know a lot of people who dislike rumble anyway. What I am against is being treated like an idiot (regardless of whether I am or not), as most self-respecting people are. The whole deal feels like Sony is trying to pull a fast one, and that's a bad feeling. Were it just a couple of things that felt this way I wouldn't care so much. However, when everything that comes straight from the horse's mouth breathes of contempt for me and my intelligence, and only smells of greed for my dollars...
I wish Sony well, I just wish they could do something to restore my faith that they're honest.
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Let's say it costs Sony $1 more per controller with rumble... that could be $100 million or more over the life of the console. How many sales will Sony lose by ignoring rumble altogether? I'd be very surprised if it was more than a dozen, or even one. Sony made the right move, even though it is probably for the wrong reasons.
You know it is just because they're bitter. It won't cost them much, it will work, and there are far more features that cost far more that they could cut out of the controller (like the Blu-ray drive I mentioned early that costs god knows how much to put in the console). Oh and to address people that are worried about battery life, you can always turn it off, that's a half assed excuse for a half assed controller.
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It's just a way for Sony to give them the finger. It'll teach Immersion not to mess with Sony.
On the other hand, the patent system needs an upgrade much like IPv6 should be upgraded asap.
Everyone's talking about the cost of reconciling the functions (which I assume mostly goes into labor). How do they actually propose to reconcile the functions, however? If I'm not mistaken, the rumbling caused by most mechanisms is designed to be difficult to predict precisely. So the only way to block it is to take down functionality completely for a second, or at least desensitize it. That's got to be annoying. Alternatively, the rumbling can be simplified, but that's not much better. Even beside that, it's got to be jarring to have the axis you've used as a control mechanism suddenly go crazy, even if the signals aren't actually being sent to the game.
Since when has Sony cared about their products being too expensive? They've always seemed to have the attitude that they can put whatever price they want on something and it will still sell. Not that it's a bad thing, but this seems to go against previous decisions.
Is it just a marketing ploy?
... but it didn't 'make' the experience either. From the beginning of rumble with StarFox 64, to the more recent games, the best (IMHO) implementation of the rumble feature is in driving games, where riding over the bumps feels right (or maybe the earth-shaking commonly present in Final Fantasy games :P.) Otherwise you get a tactile sensation that coorelates to some action on the screen that is not proportional. You get shot, you feel a buzz. You die, the damn thing vibrates hard for 3 seconds. Most games also have an on screen indication at all of the points that the controller vibrates (except for simulation as in the driving games.)
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Nintendo have put motion sensing and rumble into the Wii controller. They didn't seem to have any of the same issues as Sony did combining the two. Considering the cost of a Wii and a PS3, I hardly think cost was an issue. Sony took it out because they were sued by Immersion Corporation and didn't want to license it from them.
to license technology from a company that sued them over a patent as idiotic as a vibrating controller. Any dildo manufacturer could think of that. I'd be upset if they did license the technology, just as I am upset that Apple has licensed the use of Amazon.com's 1-click patent.
I don't want Sony to feed the patent trolls.
And by the way, filtering out vibrations at _known_ frequencies from motion data is also trivial and not deserving of a patent.
Software filtering seems like it might work, but it would have to screw with the precision. The cost of rumble doesn't just include the cost of fixing the problem but also the actual mechanisms that rumble, like a higher capacity battery, motors, and weights. I wouldn't doubt that a rumbling controller with similar battery life would cost twice as much to make. The SIXAXIS seems like the best controller for the next-gen consoles. The 360' controller is just boring and the rechargeable batteries cost extra. The WiiMote looks really neat, but it doesn't come with rechargeable batteries either and it will require line-of-site to get it's X,Y,Z positional info. The PS3 has a standard rechargeable battery and works completely on bluetooth(no Infra-Red). Even if I don't end up getting a PS3 I'll probably pick up a SIXAXIS for my laptop.
Come on guys, are you seriously trying to bring up all these arguments about rumble working with motion sensitivity? Just because Sony said that is the reason does not mean it is. I can say with 99.9% accuracy that if Nintendo can do it than Sony can do it. Hell, why not do what they always do and just copy Nintendo? They ALREADY copied the motion sensitivity. :p
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Errr... 1 + 1 = 3 now?
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You should feel the new PS3 controller. Sure, it might not rumble, but it is lighter for it. Lovely, IMHO.
"[...]our engineers in less than a day had come up with three solutions; one is filtering and the other is processing and neither one is incrementally an increase in the cost."
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Nobody ever talked about the price of controllers until the Nintendo announced the prices for the Wiimote and nunchuck. I think the interview was just an attempt to capitalize on this issue to justify the cost of the SIXAXIS. It really seems like Kaz Hirai is just trying to imply that Sony cares about cost to the consumer unlike the competition. It's a veiled backhand at the competition, distracts consumers from the cost of the PS3, and tries to build a sense of "we care about our customers".
I might be wrong on this (and I probably am so feel free to call me out on it) but doesnt the Wii use some kind of sensors attached to the top of your TV screen to triangulate the position of the controller while the PS3 controller actually uses tilt sensors built into the controller itself. Perhaps this is why the Wii can get away with using rumble without interfearance.
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Three solutions.. one is filtering and the other is processing.. .. that's TWO solutions.
Also while the rumble filter would not cost anything, surely LICENSING IMMERSON CORP'S PATENT is pretty expensive in the first place. Easier not to have the technology at all than have to pay for it, and then pay for engineering time on all thr^H^Hwo solutions..
Apparently someone said you couldn't do both as the rumble would interfere with the tilt sensor. Despite Nintendo originally doing it in 2003 .
I think if people want rumble, they'll just buy a madcatz controller with rumble support. I don't think the feature will be completely absent from all PS3 games, just the default setup.