PS3 Rumble Controller Confirmed

IGN was playing a build of the upcoming title Burnout: Paradise when they noticed something new about the controller in their hands: it was shaking. The rumble-equipped PlayStation 3 controller is almost certainly a reality at this point, with Kaz Harai's keynote tomorrow expected to officially announce the product. "The controller we were using to play the demo looked exactly like a standard Sixaxis, except that it had a sticker on the bottom that said 'RUMBLE.' It also felt notably heavier than the standard Sixaxis."

Comments

Adding Rumble helps, but please fix the rest...

[trdrstv]

Ok, I missed Rumble (at least in MotorStorm), but please can you fix a few other things while you're at it?

1) Sixaxis Tilt is Not nearly sensitive enough to be useful. Please figure out a Fix or Hire someone who worked on ExciteTruck to do it for you.

2) The R2 & L2 Buttonie-trigger thing. Either make them proper buttons (like L1, R1), or triggers (like the 360), don't care which but this inbetween solution you have now is bad.

3) Swap the left Analog and Dpad. MS, Nintendo and Sega all did so because it is more comfortable to play 3D games that way. Bolting the Dual analogs at the bottom made sense in the PS1 era, but not 2 gens later.

4) User replaceable Battery. Make it AAA, AA, or Proprietary; I don't care which so long as I can swap it with another in a few seconds without disassembly.

Re:Adding Rumble helps, but please fix the rest...

[Chris Burke]

5. Don't listen to this guy. Leave the D-Pad right where it is. It's 1000x better that way. If you're going to move them, put them in the same place on both sides of the controller. If you're going to move them up, you'll have to make the controller wider, otherwise your thumbs won't be properly aligned with the analog sticks.

Don't listen to the guy who thinks unnecessary hand stress is 1000x better. No, really. Putting the most used control down and to the right means you have to bend your thumb outward away from it's natural configuration. The reason you don't put them in the same place on both sides is because on the right side you want the buttons to be where it is most natural to push them -- imagine if they put the 4 primary buttons where the right analog stick is now. Hard to hit them, right? Right, because it's an unnatural position. The goal is to have the most neutral hand position for the most common items. MS and N understand this.

Back in the PS1, when the DPad was the most common item, Sony put the analog stick where it is for that reason. Keeping it out of the way of the DPad, so the DPad would be just as familiar and comfortable as it used to be. There was no excuse for keeping it in the same place on the PS2, and for the PS3 still having the mostly useless DPad where the thumb most naturally rests is idiotic. They keep it that way solely because of the brand recognition. But some people have convinced themselves that these historical reasons that de-emphasized the analog stick are actually ergonomic reasons that favor the analog stick. That the current location is the ideal spot for the analog stick, even though it was originally put in that spot exactly because it isn't the ideal spot for primary input.

If you really think down and to the right is the best, most optimal and comfortable position for the primary input method, why did zero controllers have that setup with the Dpad? The original PS1 controller didn't put the D-pad or buttons in that area, they put it in the upward position so that it's easiest to reach, just like everyone else.

Battery life?

[neumayr]

I'd imagine that rumble feature to be quite power hungry, so what will that do to sixaxis' battery life? Get it down to wiimote level or even worse?