Optional "advanced" controller headed to the XB 360 at some point.

[Titanio]

I'm not convinced, but hopefully. We'll see.

What did you have mind, higher quality, more of it?

For sound-rich games with a lot of audio, you often see poor sampling quality. Like voices on less important characters or whatever. I want to see that improved, and have consistent quality. There was an interview a little while ago for the guy doing sound on Scarface, I think he was Skywalker Sound, and he was quite excited about what Blu-ray would allow, I think saying that once you get about 50GB you could do whatever you want with your game audio.

edit - Qroach, I'm not going to repeat myself ad nauseum. I've explained that point a number of times now, I'm not going to do it again, because it would be the exact same as the last time!

 

[Qroach]

edit - Qroach, I'm not going to repeat myself ad nauseum. I've explained that point a number of times now, I'm not going to do it again, because it would be the exact same as the last time!

That's fine by me, it'd still be wrong imo...

 

[DemoCoder]

But it would be much more than adding an "IF" statement.

First you would have to program the game to detect which controller you were using. Second you would have to support more than 1 controller type in the game. Third you would have to attach that controller configuration to your online filters, then add in the ability for the host to filter out certain types of controllers or not, and finally you would ahve to transmit that setting to the matchmaking service.

This work is trivial and developers have been doing it for years in PC titles in terms of offering control options. And Microsoft has APIs that take away alot of the pain by hiding the details of controllers beneath DirectInput and semantic mapping.

On the matchmaking side you would have add in the multiple controllers as options and filtering based on the host options.

From what I've read, the matchmaking system is already flexible and can use lots of metadata to make decisions, so all you'd need is one additional field to negotiate: controller type.

This seems to be pointless arguing for the status quo. Aren't people with expensive steering wheel controllers at an advantage with respect to people using the control sticks? What about people with flight sticks and arcade joysticks? Seems to me to be ridiculous to argue against the mouse, but support peripherals like wheels, light guns, flight sticks, STEEL BATALLION , etc

 

[AlNom]

STEEL BATALLION , etc

But see, there was an infinite advantage to having the cockpit controls because the game wouldn't work without them.

Now there's a game that deserves a next-gen iteration (although one would probably have to re-purchase the control setup because of the different connections between Xbox & Xbox 360 sans modifying the cables themselves).

 

[NRP]

DemoCoder is right. It seems kind of hypocritical of MS to allow support for wheels and other specialized controllers but not allow mouse/keyboard support. I'd guess they really aren't interested in converting PC gamers into console gamers just yet.

I guess the real difficulty is balancing a game (I'm thinking of shooters here) where both gamepads and mouse/keyboards are used. The majority of the console userbase would be using the default gamepad, so you couldn't realistically make a mouse/keyboard only game and expect it to sell.

Mouse aiming is better than stick aiming. How to compensate for this without totally ruining the gameplay experience is surely more difficult than most people think and, in the end probably not worth the effort at this time since MS still has a vested interest in PC gaming (they probably make more $ selling you Windows than selling you a 360 and a game).

 

[Acert93]

From what I've read, the matchmaking system is already flexible and can use lots of metadata to make decisions, so all you'd need is one additional field to negotiate: controller type.

This seems to be pointless arguing for the status quo. Aren't people with expensive steering wheel controllers at an advantage with respect to people using the control sticks? What about people with flight sticks and arcade joysticks? Seems to me to be ridiculous to argue against the mouse, but support peripherals like wheels, light guns, flight sticks, STEEL BATALLION , etc

Yep, thanks for joining my bandwagon. It is all about market position with MS and avoiding the perception of "its a computer" and any movement that could validate consoles as PCs and possibly harm OS sales.

I don't see why MS could not have created a console where you can buy a Windows OS for the console (lets say $100 addon, maybe packaged with a larger HDD for $200) and then license a slew of "Xbox PC Perephrials" for printers, digital cameras, HD DVD addons, etc stuff that worked with a normal PC and certified to work with the Xbox.

The only reason I think they DON'T go this route is peeps like Dell. Of course they are missing out on a significant market oppurtunity and are pretty much leaving the door open to Sony--who is doing exactly the above through Linux. MS's strength is definately its Software. It may not be for everyone, but a console that can do basic tasks like email, word processing, graphic editing, etc would be a powerful CHEAP tool perfect for homework and whats not. Kind of expand the console from a gaming machine with some media features to a more robust "PC like" product where gaming, media, and basic productivity merge.

But I think MS is wanting to avoid this for short term financial reasons, and the wide spread support of KB/MS reinforces this message and begins to eat into the very delicate and fragile PC gaming market.

Honestly, if it were not for KB/MS the only thing keeping me on PC gaming is user created mods. Consoles have "plenty" of RAM, HD display support, and all around are decent devices. Consoles get more games, more stable games, more high quality exclusives, and I would happily upgrade every 5 years instead of throwing down stupid money on a GPU every 2 and always worrying about CPU, Memory, etc upgrades.