Slashdot Mirror
PS3 Controller Flimsy, Wii Controller Fun
With the advent of new input styles in the PS3 and Wii, many gamers are wondering what it will be like to actually play with the new controllers. Via Aeropause, an article on IGN says that the SIXAXIS controller is flimsy and poorly designed. Meanwhile, via Joystiq, an article on British site Entertainmentwise reports that the Wii isn't physically exhausting at all, as some people feared. After two hours of playtime, in fact, they loved the experience. From the article: "Some gamers have shown concern that the activity level required to play Wii games, especially the sporty titles, may be too high. There are concerns that you have to stand for long periods of time and use body actions such as swinging your arm above your head or at the side of your body. After playing non stop for two hours, did this happen to me? No. I'm not exactly Wonder woman in terms of fitness and I can assure you, as a regular player there was enough action to warrant perhaps making sure one has access to a tap before playing (you're going to want a drink if you play for as long as we did!) and possibly ensuring plenty of moving around space in your living room. The key to the Wii control is that even the most active title on the launch line up, Wii Sports, doesn't require you to make large body motions unless you want to."
Everyone I have talked to about Wii was concerned about the need to constantly move around in order to interact with the system. Frankly people seemed concerned that they would look "stupid". I can't wait to try these games, I believe that the Wii Remote and Nunchuck controllers will allow real 3D control over 3D environments for the very first time, it seems like it's going to be nonstop fun.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
This post is grabbing one review for one piece of hardware and comaring it to a completely different review of another piece of hardware? That's just silly. Somebody let me know when there are some side-by-side comparisons of both controllers actually comparing the featuresets and performance of each.
I also heard that the SIXAXIS controller ... only uses three axes :-(
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Yeah, it's even better if you read the PS3 article. It gushes. The author is in love with his demo PS3. You get the impression that he wants to marry it. There's a small bit towards the end where he says that, unlike everything else, the controller didn't quite live up to his wildest fantasies. And Slashdot pounces.
I'll be honest, I'm a born-again Nintendo fanboy. I desperately want a Wii, and have no personal interest in a PS3. But what's with the anti-Sony smear campaign? How does that make sense?
They may not be available to the general public yet, but these guys have actually played with the respective controllers, so it's hardly speculation, and with production lead times being what they are, they'll have been playing with actual release revisions of the hardware and not just protoypes as those who made pretty much the same comments months ago were.
Granted, if it were your mate from down the pub telling you the same thing then you'd be quite right being sceptical, but I don't think so in this case.
if you're still working with early controller prototypes a month before launch, you've got problems.
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I'd mod you down, but then no one would know why. If you had bothered to read the article until the end, here it is:
FTFA:
"Personally, we can't help but feel that the SIXAXIS (as it's now known) has been sadly neglected when viewed alongside the rest of the PS3. Compared to Microsoft's uber-comfortable Xbox 360 pad, the SIXAXIS feels cheap, plasticky, uncomfortable and disconcertingly light - almost as if it's going to fly out of your hands during those more extreme gaming moments.
More worrying still, the newly-designed lower L and R shoulder triggers feel more like they belong on an early controller prototype than the near-final model. Replicating the 360 pad, rather than being simple shoulder-mounted buttons, the triggers are now hinged horizontally along the controller, with pressure forcing them inward along the bottom - like triggers then, really. Trouble is, they're placed almost unnaturally low meaning we found ourselves operating them by jamming our fingers in between the hinges to apply pressure, rather than using the buttons themselves. What's more, the triggers are convex, with no grooves to keep your fingers in place - an issue further compounded by their smooth finish, offering no resistance against your finger tips. Invariably we found our digits slipping off with the triggers snapping back to their default position. Bah. Of course, the PS2's Dual Shock pad wasn't without its faults either but we still learned to live with it. It's just a shame that Sony hasn't used its resources to bring its controller up to next-gen standards along with its cutting-edge hardware."
My guess is that the Slashdot smear campaign against Sony is about a 50-50 mix of Zonk's blatant Nintendo fanboyism and Sony's string of recent and highly publicized failures and oversights, starting with or perhaps preceding the XCP rootkit scandal last year. At this point in time, Sony isn't being viewed by many people in an especially positive light, and with good reason. Frankly, I'm not especially confident in Sony's offerings either, especially after that whole flaming battery thing, but I digress...
Even if from time to time it looks like the PS3 will barely make it out of the gate, it's impossible to judge a product that hasn't yet been released. (It could wind up either kicking or sucking huge amounts of ass, or some bizarre combination of ass kick-suckery in between.) Yet, it would seem that this post was crafted specifically to make the PS3 look bad by comparing it's controller - which was mentioned in TFA-1 as being awkward and uncomfortable, though still usable - to the Wii's controller, described in TFA-2 as being comfortable easy to use, even though the remainder of TFA-1 showed that not only did the writer approve of the PS3, he fucking loved it. (On a slightly unrelated note, why the fuck would I want to take any site devoted to gaming journalism seriously anyway, when it's been proven time and again that gaming journalism might as well be considered freelance fiction work?) In spite of all this, it'd seem that whoever posted this stuff almost hoped we'd just take their word for it instead of R'ing either TFA, and just take their own 'flimsy' inference as gospel. None of it makes sense, until you look at who posted it.
I'm in the same boat as you, though I have much fonder memories of Sega. I love Nintendo as much as the next guy, and they haven't pissed me off nearly as much as Sony has over the past year, but come the fuck on. This is like Anti-Sony propaganda now, and almost all of it is spouted from the pen - or should I say keyboard - of Zonk. It would've been fine enough to post the articles individually. A mostly glowing review of the PS3, and a nice piece on the Wii's controller, but no. He just had to roll them all into one speculative clusterfuck of bullshit and fail in a thinly veiled fit of fanboyism disguised as reporting. It's this kind of shit that makes Slashdot look less like a news site and more like a retarded fanclub.
Seeing as he can't do it himself, I think someone needs to put a cap on Zonk's shit, or at least give him a stern talking to about the virtues of shutting the fuck up until he has something intelligent to say.