Nintendo JoyCon/Controller Technology *spawn*

[Deleted member 11852]

It wouldn't. I already said it was probably the more profitable choice for Sony. However, consider 200 niggling little things that make a 5* console in a 2* experience - that clearly loses sales.

And if the PS4 had 200 niggling issues it would be very different.

 

[Exophase]

Do we have idea what the IR camera is capable of, other than gesture recognition?

Nintendo don't seem it gave shown any actual games that us it yet have they?

I do wonder if it's really just for Wii VC, and IR want too much bother to upgrade it slightly over the wiimote.

They can't make that much from WiiVC though. Seems like an expensive waste if no Switch games use it.

I don't see Wii VC happening unless the CPUs are a lot more powerful than 4x1GHz Cortex-A57.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And if the PS4 had 200 niggling issues it would be very different.

Huh?

 

[AzBat]

Perhaps it's time console companies gave up on the altruistic visions and just went with the common-or-garden common denominator?

Got one for you...

Spoiler

Tommy McClain

 

[cheapchips]

I don't see Wii VC happening unless the CPUs are a lot more powerful than 4x1GHz Cortex-A57.

Fair point. The hardware is powerful enough to have ports under the VC banner though, even if straightforward emulation isnt possible. Not sure Nintendo would see a return on that investment.

Wii ports were the only significant use case I could think of, since we've been shown nothing else so far.

I assume the reason companies continue to experiment with non-stick controls is that sticks are not perfect, just the best general option.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I see no battery problem with my DS4.
When I'm not playing, it's charging. It's almost always charged.
In the odd chance the battery runs out (which happened probably once or twice since I got a PS4 in December 2013) I just plug in a USB cable and I keep playing while the gamepad is being charged.

8 hours is plenty.
I envy the people who have so much free time in their hands that they can complain about their gamepads not going wireless for more than 8 hours straight.

 

[Cyan]

I see no battery problem with my DS4.
When I'm not playing, it's charging. It's almost always charged.
In the odd chance the battery runs out (which happened probably once or twice since I got a PS4 in December 2013) I just plug in a USB cable and I keep playing while the gamepad is being charged.

8 hours is plenty.
I envy the people who have so much free time in their hands that they can complain about their gamepads not going wireless for more than 8 hours straight.

24 hours should be the average for any controller,I think. I kinda dislike that glowing light in a gamepad all the time, I guess it doesn't help with the battery life.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

24 hours should be the average for any controller,I think.

Why?
Are you going to play for 24 hours non-stop? And even if you were to do that (which any doctor would strongly advice against), does it really need to be used wirelessly the whole time?

I'd get that many people could often get frustrated if the gamepad only lasted 4 hours or so, but 8 hours isn't enough in what situation? Within 8 hours you should've had to have 2 meals, drink some water and at least pee a couple of times.


Perhaps this is just a matter of people being more comfortable with being forgetful when they go away from the room without leaving the DS4 charging?
I wouldn't know, I have a charging dock so that's where my gamepads remain when I'm not using them.

 

[BRiT]

I simply don't want to be forced to charge the device every single night or every other night or every third night. I also don't want to buy additional accessories such as charging docks. A simple cable wraps up and gets out of the way easily. I charge my controller maybe every 10 days, with about 30 hours of use. When I'm done gaming for the night the Elite controller goes back into its case.

There is a huge difference between 8 hours and 30 hours between recharges.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I simply don't want to be forced to charge the device every single night or every other night or every third night. I also don't want to buy additional accessories such as charging docks. A simple cable wraps up and gets out of the way easily. I charge my controller maybe every 10 days, with about 30 hours of use. When I'm done gaming for the night the Elite controller goes back into its case.

You don't want to buy $15 charging docks but you're happily comparing the $150 Elite controller to the standard $50 Dualshock 4?
You don't have to buy any charging dock. The console in rest mode recharges the gamepads.


Regardless, that's because you probably own a Xbone which has the ports on the back or an odd one to the side.
The PS4 has two ports on the front, so you take 0.001 effort and 5 seconds of your time just plugging the cable in. The console will warn you about 30 minutes before running out of battery and any game can be instantly paused by going to the dashboard, cut-scenes included (-> again, running out of battery mid-session happened to me probably twice during the last 3 years).


Is 24 hours battery time better than 8 hours? Of course it is.
Does is make any difference, realistically? Save for a seemingly loud but very tiny minority, it doesn't look like it is so. And Sony - or any other company who seeks to cater to a broad audience - won't and shouldn't pander to such minorities.

The 3x larger battery life in the xbone gamepad didn't stop the PS4 from getting >2x the sales of the Xbone, and there's probably >2x more DS4 sales than Xbone Gamepad sales too given the >2x larger install base.



Now back to the JoyCons which is what the thread is about:
20 hours on each JoyCon is great, but maybe this was yet another bad decision. They could have saved some money on each Joycon battery and make it 8 hours (the console will charge them in handheld mode anyways) to make the console cheaper or spend more on a better SoC.

 

[BRiT]

Normal controllers last as long as Elite controllers since they both use the same Play-and-charge kit, so find some argument other than price.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Normal controllers last as long as Elite controllers since they both use the same Play-and-charge kit, so find some argument other than price.

Other than the 4 paragraphs you didn't address?

 

[cheapchips]

20 hours on each JoyCon is great, but maybe this was yet another bad decision. They could have saved some money on each Joycon battery and make it 8 hours (the console will charge them in handheld mode anyways) to make the console cheaper or spend more on a better SoC.

I'd assumed they lifted whatever Bluetooth headset/fitness tracker batteries were available on the cheap. They're 525mAh though, so probably fairly dense for the size of the controller.

Teardowns are going to be interesting.

With the Joycons, local four player is really quite good value compared to other platforms. Assuming you don't mind your friends suing you for RSI.

 

[Cyan]

You don't want to buy $15 charging docks but you're happily comparing the $150 Elite controller to the standard $50 Dualshock 4?
You don't have to buy any charging dock. The console in rest mode recharges the gamepads.


Regardless, that's because you probably own a Xbone which has the ports on the back or an odd one to the side.
The PS4 has two ports on the front, so you take 0.001 effort and 5 seconds of your time just plugging the cable in. The console will warn you about 30 minutes before running out of battery and any game can be instantly paused by going to the dashboard, cut-scenes included (-> again, running out of battery mid-session happened to me probably twice during the last 3 years).


Is 24 hours battery time better than 8 hours? Of course it is.
Does is make any difference, realistically? Save for a seemingly loud but very tiny minority, it doesn't look like it is so. And Sony - or any other company who seeks to cater to a broad audience - won't and shouldn't pander to such minorities.

The 3x larger battery life in the xbone gamepad didn't stop the PS4 from getting >2x the sales of the Xbone, and there's probably >2x more DS4 sales than Xbone Gamepad sales too given the >2x larger install base.



Now back to the JoyCons which is what the thread is about:
20 hours on each JoyCon is great, but maybe this was yet another bad decision. They could have saved some money on each Joycon battery and make it 8 hours (the console will charge them in handheld mode anyways) to make the console cheaper or spend more on a better SoC.

In your previous posts you were constantly talking about semantincs and playing games in one sitting. And that's not how people play,usually.... At their battery's life peak, I remember X360 controllers having like a 20+ hours autonomy. That means not only being able to forget you need to recharge, but also means that you can carry the console with you and play at a friend's house without bringing the charger, if that can be helped.

 

[Picao84]

First world problems

I agree that 8 hours is plenty of time for most adult gamers. It can also be a good game time management for kids if parents make it uncomfortable to play with the cable connected, or better yet hide the cable

 

[Deleted member 13524]

In your previous posts you were constantly talking about semantincs and playing games in one sitting.

You'll need to quote exactly what you mean about talking semantics. Where exactly have I discussed the meaning of something?

At their battery's life peak, I remember X360 controllers having like a 20+ hours autonomy. That means not only being able to forget you need to recharge, but also means that you can carry the console with you and play at a friend's house without bringing the charger, if that can be helped.

The conversation was originally about the DS4's battery life and how "Sony should get more criticism" for it.
The DS4 is made to connect to a PS4. If you take the PS4 with you, it still has two USB ports in the front for you to charge the controllers within a little over half an hour IIRC.
Forgetting to recharge isn't such a big deal because charging is convenient in the PS4 <-> DS4 system.


Regarding the "DS4 battery bad because Sony greedy" argument, maybe it's also because:

1 - there's a multi-touch capacitive touchpad
2 - an embedded speaker,
3 - a 3.5mm audio jack for analog stereo output and mic input
4 - numbers 3 and 4 imply a two-way A2DP IC, a DAC, an ADC and an amplifier for phones and the speaker. I'm not sure but there probably are single ICs that will do all that, but they're not free. EDIT: turns out it has a Cortex M3 microcontroller and a Wolfson CODEC and it appears to connect to the PS4 as 2 distinct bluetooth devices: a HID and a headset.
5 - a multi-colored LED light in there, which regardless the criticism or perceived usability it allows the controller to be used as a wand for PSVR. It lowers the cost for VR, since the only other investment besides PSVR is the camera and you don't have to buy the wands for most games.
I think the LED is great for couch-coop games when people pick up the gamepads after a break and don't know which pad belongs to whom. The user should have the option to disable it, though. That part is stupid.
6 - a more complex and expensive PCB to allow these extra components.


None of the above is present in the Dualshock 3 or the X360 gamepad. Perhaps the money was better spent on all these features instead of a battery that lasts 50 hours, in a world where maybe 100 people make use of more than 8 hours, and 10 of those whine about it in the internet.

Again, I'm not saying a battery with larger capacity is a bad thing. It's a good thing.
It's the people who demand more than those 8 hours that are probably just statistically irrelevant.

And the people who would "demand" 20 hours with the Joycons are probably just as statistically irrelevant as the ones who would do so for the DualShock 4.
Therefore, money could have been better spent elsewhere, instead of relatively large batteries in the joycons.
And SoCs go down in price as processes mature and yields increase, whereas batteries don't really change price all that much. At least not during a videogame console's lifetime.