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Why Can't Motion and Rumble Get Along?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the controller-fight dept.

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."

1 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Rumble is Awesome... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    ...for masturbation.

    I'm serious. Wireless rumble controllers FTW. I've had this one for about 8 months now and I've only had to replace the AA batteries once. I've just recently started to use it as a sex toy, when I realized I could just keep pressing the button on the controller labeled, well, "VIBRATION" every half second or so and it would constantly vibrate. It's uh, pretty sexy. AHem. So far I haven't "soiled" the controller, but I'm very careful about that.

    Oh yeah, it's also great for emulators, driving games, and fighting games. Street Fighter 2 is totally playable, compared to skimping along on a keyboard getting owned by Zangief. GTR2 (new hardcore racing sim, just came out) is totally playable with the two analog sticks for steering and throttle/brake. You just gotta have some analog inputs or a wheel for GTR2. Stomp the gas from 0% throttle to 100% instantly and you'll surely lose traction and go off. Brake digitally and you'll skid right off the turn.