Nintendo Slams Copycat Sony

[Shifty Geezer]

The Vectrex thumbstick wasn't analog though. It was digital.

Ahh, okay. Atari had a full size analogue stick. Vectrex had a digital stick integrated into a controller. But it took an incredible leap of inventiveness on Nintendo's part to add an analogue stick to a pad...

 

[Ty]

Ahh, okay. Atari had a full size analogue stick. Vectrex had a digital stick integrated into a controller. But it took an incredible leap of inventiveness on Nintendo's part to add an analogue stick to a pad...

No, the Vectrex IS an analog stick.

 

[Acert93]

The decision not to include a dual HDMI was reported months ago. In 2005. Its not something new.

E3 was only the confirmation[/quote]

Interesting, you have a link?

From reading responses here and from different media outlets like IGN and Gamespot it seems it was news to most. The last thing I remember was in late 2005 Ken stating that the inclusion of the Dual HDMI had nothing to do with the PC roots of the GPU and that RSX was not derived from a PC chip. (I cannot find the link to this, but we did discuss it to some detail) Similarly some developers were still talking about the feature in September. e.g.

So that means I have to buy a new TV to get the most out of PS3?

You can probably get away with only onebut I tell you, this dual HDMI interface is a bit of all right, fully digital signal all the way to your plasma or projector is a beatiful thing. Crisp, colourful, high contrast – black will finally be black, not some cloudy grey. Beautiful. Well worth the investment.

Everything I can find indicates this was a new development that had not been disclosed publically before by Sony.

Anyhow, my point was that Sony had a number of hyped features at E3 2005 that did not make it into the final product. Something like 6 USB, 3 Eternet ports, 7 bluetooth controller support, dual HDMI, and so forth. They spent a couple minutes explaining why dual HDMI would help gaming and be a selling point. E3 press time is not cheap and it should be tightly focused. After E3 Sony was pretty clear that dual HDMI was important to them. Besides Ken's adament statements, this Interview with Masayuki Chatani, SCEI CTO indicates a similar firm conviction.

Q. You must have a good reason to add 2 HDMI transmitters, what usage do you expect for dual HDMI?

A. It's purely because we wanted to add them. Since multi display expands gaming like a horizontally wide dual display or an extended game screen, we've wanted to add it at any cost. You don't have to connect 2 HDTVs, a small sub-display is enough.

Either they changed direction (which can be confusion to consumers), or it was one-up PRing. I think it is probably the later (who really has 2 TVs in the same room? I am sure some of you do, but I have never seen anyone with such an arrangement) and I think the idea of using the PSP kind of filled this void to a degree. Of course the redesign of RSX did not hurt

In theory I like dual - displays. It is like system link. System link in the PS1 was a little early conceptually. But it took off with the Xbox1. I think this gen is too early for 2 displays because displays are too expensive and not common enough and the consoles are not quite powerful enough to have 2x HD screens.

But next next-gen? I think flat panels will have dropped and PC panels common enough (sub $100 for a solid one even?) and the consoles fast enough that 2x 720p screens for MP & Coop would seem like a real option to many consumers. So I am not poo pooing the idea, I just think it is early. I think Sony realized this and removed it from the design (if it were there for anything other than PR to begin with).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No, the Vectrex IS an analog stick.

Which doesn't much help Nintendo's case

Actually, it's amazing how old many ideas are. Someone round here has a sig saying something like 'any idea worth a damn is already patened - twice'. Chances of coming up with something not touched upon by someone else years earlier are few and far between. I've known modern new inventions filled for patents be preempted by 150 year old patents! And as various past greats have observed, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. That's progress, and a good thing too!

 

[Nesh]

Interesting, you have a link?

My mistake I confused it with something else they dropped

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=10033

But Sony many have other plans for its bank of Gigabit Ethernet ports

The PlayStation 3 will no longer act as a home network router, according to Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi, who has revealed that the functionality has been dropped because it would have been too expensive.

Speaking with Japanese publication Nikkei Electronics, Kutaragi said that the original specification for the PS3 would have allowed the system's three Gigabit Ethernet ports to be used as a home router.

However, this functionality has now been dropped since it would have made the console cost too much to manufacture, he admitted - and Sony now expects that users will continue to use their existing router hardware, which is becoming more commonplace in households with broadband internet connections.

Whether that means the bank of network ports on the back of the box has actually been reduced to a single port is not clear, however, as the company has previously hinted that it has other plans in mind for the multiple network ports.

The news that the system was intended for use as a router or hub was first revealed at E3, when Sony's Phil Harrison told GamesIndustry.biz that "it can be a hub, rather than just being a terminal at the end of a network."

"Also, we want to be able to have a Gigabit port for an IP camera," he revealed. "So one of the ports is an in, and two of them are through. It can be a server as well as a terminal."."

Anyways I think people are making too much fuss about the dual HDMI thing. I doubt it would have been of much of a use for most people. Some dont even own a single HDTV. Imagine how many have 2 HDTVs and are actually planning to use both on a PS3

If peeple are concerned so much about the price and dont feel like the extras are needed they should be happy Sony cut one HDMI because most likely they cut costs too

 

[Powderkeg]

Nintendo comes out with the 'dpad' on the NES ----> Everyone copies

Mattel comes out with a Directional Pad on the Intellivision---> Nintendo copies

Nintendo comes out with shoulder buttons on the SNES ---> Everyone copies (including Sony with the PS1 controller)

Atari comes out with shoulder buttons on the 5200 ---> Nintendo copies

Nintendo comes out with analog stick for N64 ----> Sony Comes out with Dual Analog stick PS1 controller

Atari comes out with an Analog Stick for the 5200 ---> Nintendo copies

Nintendo releases 'rumble pack' for N64 ----> Sony builds rumble into each controller

Immersion and their partners create a variety of PC force feedback and rumble controllers for the PC ----> Nintendo copies

Historically when it comes to control schemes Nintendo has always been the innovator and everyone else follows suit.

Got to give credit where credit is due

Yes, give credit where credit is due.

 

[NANOTEC]

No, as I explained this to you before. The Vectrex uses potentiometers. I should know, I have one right here on my desk and have looked into repairing it (an old spring went bad).

Now, MOST games used it as purely a digital interface but at least one game DID use it as an analog device..

Ok which game used it as an analog device? I've played most of the Vectrex games.

 

[pc999]

I think that people is with to much obessession with who copy who, somethings sometimes it is just natural evolution. When something is proved to simple better than the others then it is natural that it became standard soner or latter, IMO.

(valid for any company)

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

Well considering Sony had this idea patend'd for a good few years, id say they did'nt copy.

 

[Fox5]

Yep. That's what Peter T was saying. Though I guess the CD innovation was Nintendo's in that they commisioned it, and Sony 'stole' it when Nintendo gave up and stuck with carts.

Given how ideas are a dime a dozen, I give the innovation title to whoever first popularized an idea. Sony mass marketted it, thus it's their innovation. Sega tried with the Sega CD, and showed the idea to be a failure.

Right now, it looks like Sony's copied Nintendo, but if the Wii bombs and Sony's tilt sensor goes on to be immensely popular (say...games that make significant use of it go on to a combined 10 to 20 million in sales), I'll give Sony props for a proper innovation, and Nintendo can get the failed dreams award.

BTW, Nintendo's European branch seems to have poor public relations.

PS. Thank god Nintendo hasn't patented their approaches and aggressively pursued them, that would have been horrible for the industry. (well, they've come after emulation a bit harshly, before eventually adopting it as their modus operandi)

I think the patent system should be revamped so companies have to take an active interest in protecting their assets. If no product (or significant attempt to make one) is made in say 5 or 10 years that makes that patent public domain. Likewise, if customers are demanding content in a way not offered by the content producers, that should not be illegal if the company does not attempt to make a profit off it. Applies for emulation, and applies for music as well. If people are pirating your music, you don't tell them "no that's wrong, go buy the cds," you say "here's our online distribution method, do it the legal way." I think regulation meets better success than outlawing, and makes the protectionist laws more sensible because an alternative is offered to illegal activities.

I dont get however why a new controller should be automatically "innovative", yet a new optical format or a radically different CPU (Cell) not.

Because a new controller directly affects how the consumer interacts with the game, the cpu and optical format are transparent to the consumer and only matter to the developer.

Piracy had very little to with it, really. Since they could have opted for a proprietary optical media, if they wanted to.

The control Nintendo had over the production and the extremely high margins made with the sales of cartridges are the main reasons that explain why the N64 was not CD based.

Seems to me here, that an analogy could be made to Nintendo's insistence on still having their own console, rather than going 3rd party.
Anyhow, why go for proprietary optical media, when they already had the production lines for carts? The gamecube optical disks did not fit Nintendo's vision for games (do you honestly think we needed those prerendered using in game asset cutscenes in super mario sunshine?), plus they were produced by Panasonic so Nintendo got nothing from the actual production of the media. I think Nintendo likes double dipping, though the N64 probably taught them a little lesson about that, as did the Genesis (just what will happen to you when competition is around), and I'm not sure if DS's carts are produced by Nintendo still since they look like generic SD cards.
What will Nintendo do with its cart production lines once GBA game production ceases? Maybe they can be retooled towards making controllers or consoles.

Also to add to my list earlier, Ninendo was the first to have expansion ports on the actual controller (DC, Xbox copied) and the first with 4 built-in controller ports if I'm not mistaken?

I'd call controller expansion ports a failed idea, in market success, mindshare, and several technical reasons. The 4 built-in controller ports was a success, though I'm not sure for how long since I don't think Xbox 360 has 4 controller ports, and not sure about PS3. 4 player gaming definetely seems to be a success though, even if the offerings on Microsoft's and Sony's consoles for it are a bit slim.

I think Sony did a better job at making the analog stick mainstream. The N64 controller wasnt confortable at all, and the analog stick was way too sensitve. I couldnt find the analog stick a good idea because the controller's design didnt give me the chance to. The controller was painful for my hands as a whole

It wasnt until Sony put it on the PS controller which was more comfortable that I begun to understand the usefulness of the analog stick Nintendo was trying to depict with the N64.

Except the N64 was already a mainstream success by the time the dual shock came out, even if the N64 controller design sucked overall. I suppose it tried to be too innovative for innovation's sake.
And I can't think of very many psx games that even used analog control effectively (it usually just replaced using the dpad), let alone ones that showed it as revolutionary. Certainly nothing like Super Mario 64 did, though the control stick has stopped being revolutionary and has become a very integral part of gameplay. It's not something you consciously notice is there, games may not even make full use of its abilities, but once taken away, you realize how hard it is to control games without it.

Immersion and their partners create a variety of PC force feedback and rumble controllers for the PC ----> Nintendo copies

I actually think Nintendo was first here. In fact, the only rumble stuff I remember for the PC around the time period was some Microsoft Force Feedback joystick (and it was a full size joystick, not a gamepad) along with some steering wheels. Their motors were far more powerful than the stuff we see today though, and the experience much more immersive/invasive.

 

[Powderkeg]

I actually think Nintendo was first here. In fact, the only rumble stuff I remember for the PC around the time period was some Microsoft Force Feedback joystick (and it was a full size joystick, not a gamepad) along with some steering wheels. Their motors were far more powerful than the stuff we see today though, and the experience much more immersive/invasive.

Immersion and MS teamed up with Force Feedback wheels in 1995.
Immersion and CH teamed up for a full line of both Force Feedback and rumble controllers in 1996.

Nintendo released the Rumble Pack in 1997.
4 months later DirectX 5 with both Rumble and Force Feedback support fully implemented into the standard was released on the PC.

 

[Hardknock]

Immersion and MS teamed up with Force Feedback wheels in 1995.
Immersion and CH teamed up for a full line of both Force Feedback and rumble controllers in 1996.

Nintendo released the Rumble Pack in 1997.
4 months later DirectX 5 with both Rumble and Force Feedback support fully implemented into the standard was released on the PC.

Nintendo has the patent for a single motor rumble, while immersion has a 2 or more motor patent for Rumble. Or atleast that's my understanding.

 

[Tap In]

From reading responses here and from different media outlets like IGN and Gamespot it seems it was news to most. ....

indeed

we have threads here from just a couple weeks before E3 with people telling us all kinds of ideas of how Sony was going to implement the dual display and how useful it will be. (in the PS3 OS threads I believe)

 

[gokickrocks]

I'm pretty sure I saw Sony demoing motion/position sensing games and controllers at a London ECTS show about six years ago. If you want to look at prior art, long before that there were arcade games using motion sensing (such as the Virtuality games).

nintendo/mattel had their powerglove in 1989...but yes i do agree with the others that said nintendo is trying to defend their new console

 

[Ty]

Actually, it's amazing how old many ideas are. Someone round here has a sig saying something like 'any idea worth a damn is already patened - twice'. Chances of coming up with something not touched upon by someone else years earlier are few and far between. I've known modern new inventions filled for patents be preempted by 150 year old patents! And as various past greats have observed, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. That's progress, and a good thing too!

That's what I was saying. All of us here are simply too ignorant of all of the ideas already implemented in the world to be making sweeping claims about how Company X invented the Rumbling In-The-Egg-Scrambler game pad.

Ok which game used it as an analog device? I've played most of the Vectrex games.

Here's the thread where I told you about it earlier.

http://www.playvectrex.com/shoptalk/vecjoyrepair/vecjoyrepair_f.htm

Talks about poteniometers in the joystick. Those are used for measuring small changes.


http://www.classicgaming.com/vectrex/po_digital-analog.htm




And even if there wasn't a game that used this ability, the joystick would still be analog. I.e. it doesn't really matter or not if any game used analog controls.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=452190&postcount=52

 

[Inane_Dork]

It was at E3.

They apparently showed a Eyetoy PS3 launch game even (or around launch?).

You mistake my meaning. At E3 2005, it was hotness. It was wow-imagine-what-we-can-do-with-this stuff. Now it's kinda just the PS2 EyeToy again. It took a back seat to Mr. Seizure playing Warhawk.

 

[one]

Similarly some developers were still talking about the feature in September. e.g.

Everything I can find indicates this was a new development that had not been disclosed publically before by Sony.

Anyhow, my point was that Sony had a number of hyped features at E3 2005 that did not make it into the final product. Something like 6 USB, 3 Eternet ports, 7 bluetooth controller support, dual HDMI, and so forth. They spent a couple minutes explaining why dual HDMI would help gaming and be a selling point. E3 press time is not cheap and it should be tightly focused. After E3 Sony was pretty clear that dual HDMI was important to them. Besides Ken's adament statements, this Interview with Masayuki Chatani, SCEI CTO indicates a similar firm conviction.

Either they changed direction (which can be confusion to consumers), or it was one-up PRing. I think it is probably the later (who really has 2 TVs in the same room? I am sure some of you do, but I have never seen anyone with such an arrangement) and I think the idea of using the PSP kind of filled this void to a degree. Of course the redesign of RSX did not hurt

Was 7 bluetooth controller support dropped? Where did you get it?

When you discuss the change in the number of HDMI ports in PS3 I think you have to consider these points

• Back in E3 2005, the version of the HDMI ports in PS3 might not be HDMI 1.3 that requires new iTMDS transmitter chips. Since they have to manufacture as many units as possible for the launch, reducing HDMI ports does make sense.
• Back in E3 2005 HDD was not standard. Obviously you have to think again about the priority.

 

[Gargr]

Sony called it a gimmick and then:

Eurogamer: When you made the decision to put the tilt functions into the pad, how heavily influenced was that by the great response Nintendo has had to the same kind of technology in the Wii controller?

Phil Harrison: I think that some of the research that we've done, clearly other companies have been doing as well - so there's nothing completely surprising about that. But I know that the strategy was to take what was already a winning formula - to have a controller as well regarded as it, and kind of the de facto industry standard that this PlayStation shape controller has become. If you include the ones that are packed in, the secondary ones and the knock-offs that are the same shape, there are probably around 400 million of these things that have been sold on PSone and PS2.

So, we kind of took an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" strategy - but by adding motion sensitivity to the controller... Well, we didn't start the wave, but we've kind of jumped onto that wave. I'm quite happy to admit that, but that will be one of the defining characteristics of next-generation gaming, the complexity and sophistication of input that you can get from a very simple device.

What I'm really keen to communicate is the fact that by sticking with the PlayStation controller, you have this very comfortable, two-handed approach that gamers are very familiar with - and it allows you to have two channels of input. You've got your primary input that may be normal buttons, normal sticks, nothing particularly revolutionary - no pun intended - but we can also add secondary motion, and we can detect the secondary movement of the pad in addition to the primary buttons.

When you play games, everybody does the same thing - they always move the controller around. Well, we can now start to add that secondary motion into the game design, and the way that the game reacts to the user.

 

[Gargr]

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=64667&page=2

 

[Nesh]

Except the N64 was already a mainstream success by the time the dual shock came out, even if the N64 controller design sucked overall. I suppose it tried to be too innovative for innovation's sake.
And I can't think of very many psx games that even used analog control effectively (it usually just replaced using the dpad), let alone ones that showed it as revolutionary. Certainly nothing like Super Mario 64 did, though the control stick has stopped being revolutionary and has become a very integral part of gameplay. It's not something you consciously notice is there, games may not even make full use of its abilities, but once taken away, you realize how hard it is to control games without it.

I didnt imply N64 didnt become mainstream but that is irrelevant with the controller because the analoque stick doesnt have much to do with it.

The utilization of the Dual Shock's analoque stick in games wasnt any different from N64's except from the fact that the Dual Shock was more comfortable.

Mario64's usage of the analoque felt revolutionary only because it was one of the first games of that time to use the analoque stick. Nothing less, nothing more. It didnt utilize the analoque stick any better or differently than any PSX games.