Shane Kim Interview; No Force Feedback for PS3?

[Arwin]

Follow?

Yes, but usually a game gets its hardcore community thanks to the game it is, not thanks to the people that first adopt it. The hardcore community complained that GT4 was too easy, while among the average lot, there were already voices it was too hard. Hardcore tends to be interesting in completely different things from the main gamer. It's a tricky thing.

GT4 was popular quite simply because it looks awesome, and plays great too. I'm not always so sure that the first wasn't the most important - sure the second counted too, but how much? I'm not sure. Even if you couldn't play any of the cars, just gawking at the 700 excellently detailed cars virtually still draws car and car-model nuts. These last are disgusted with a game like Forza or PGR, pointing out all the flawed details that these games got wrong on their favorite cars that GT got right.

These too, are among the hardcore fans. Other hardcore racing fans insist on 60fps, but many mainstream gamers seem satisfied with 30fps and would rather have a Ferrari in the game.

The mainstream gamer that plays GT, he probably likes to have nice graphics, enjoys the pretty cars and collecting the nicer ones.

I've been in the GT community for a long time, and the hardcore crew, well, they don't make or brake the game.

Everyone here raise your hand if you've ever attended a GT4 LAN party.

 

[mckmas8808]

Totally wrong.

MS and Immersion hold the various Force Feedback patents (Immersion holds most of them), Logitech simply licenses haptic tech from Immersion.

MS's lack of Force Feedback support in the original Xbox was due to MS's unwillingness to pay even more money to license the tech when only a tiny percentage of the Xbox owners would use it. They were, and still are losing tons of money on the Xbox, and didn't see Force Feedback support doing anything but causing them to lose even more.

That's why NOBODY, including MS themselves, ever made a Force Feedback wheel for the Xbox, even though MS did have Force Feedback PC wheels at the same time.
.

Didn't we just have a developer tell us that what you just said in the above quote is false?

 

[Arwin]

Totally wrong.

MS and Immersion hold the various Force Feedback patents (Immersion holds most of them), Logitech simply licenses haptic tech from Immersion.

Hold it right there. MS owns as much of Immersion's stock as Logitech, and both licenced the technology. The driver for the wheel doesn't need to be provided by Sony - if a racing game wants to get force feedback support, they can get the driver from Logitech. Immersion can discuss with Logitech if the racing game separately needs to pay for that licence for the games sold. If they do, Sony/PD can make a deal for Gran Turismo quite separately from the Rumble licence for the Playstation.

One thing you don't realise is that MS only allows drivers that they provide. Games can't add drivers without their permission. The Playstation on the other hand allowed drivers to be loaded by third parties. This has partly to do with that PS games don't run on something like DirectX, like the Xbox games - a company like Namco can develop and load proprietary drivers for its Time Crisis series, for instance.

Logitech provides these drivers to the developers that want to support their wheels, something which they of course willingly do. Microsoft however, because of the DirectX setup and their related policy, could only include the driver on all Xboxes, or none. They wouldn't allow a third party driver to be loaded by separate games. Hence the business model there went awry. (I have read an interview with a Logitech representative which detailed this, but that was a long time ago, and I can't find the link.)

That's why NOBODY, including MS themselves, ever made a Force Feedback wheel for the Xbox, even though MS did have Force Feedback PC wheels at the same time.

These force feedback wheels were pulled off the market after Logitech sued them. If that hadn't happened, they could have used their existing DirectX drivers to support their own wheels on the original Xbox.

Mind you, who knows the new firmware setup doesn't allow proprietary drivers on the PS3 and actually requires them to be included into the new firmware before they are allowed to be used by developers. If that is the case, they are in the same situation as Microsoft was last-gen and will need a different business agreement with Logitech.

 

[Guden Oden]

'm fairly sure that Logitech licensed the drivers from Immersion to begin with.

Licensed what exactly?

Atari and lilkely others as well had force feedback steering wheels in their arcade games as far back as the 80s. There's nothing about FF steering wheels anyone would need to license from some 2-bit company like immersion.

 

[RobertR1]

GT4 was popular because it had a long time following and around 80million PS2's sold when it was released.

If you wanted realism in the logitech wheel then it should've auto corrected (i use the term loosely) for you......this was my biggest issue with all the driving wheels.

 

[Arwin]

GT4 was popular because it had a long time following and around 80million PS2's sold when it was released.

If you wanted realism in the logitech wheel then it should've auto corrected (i use the term loosely) for you......this was my biggest issue with all the driving wheels.

And you say this because you actually tried GT4 with the Driving Force Pro? Cause from the sound of it ...

 

[TheChefO]

If you wanted realism in the logitech wheel then it should've auto corrected (i use the term loosely) for you......this was my biggest issue with all the driving wheels.

Exactly - not just for the sake of autocentering but because the force against the tires (without your forcing it in any direction) would have an affect on the wheel.

speaking of force feedback - any thoughts on implementing this tech (not rumble) into the analog sticks? What would it take to make that happen? And would you as a gamer pay for/appreciate what it brings to the table?

 

[scooby_dooby]

speaking of force feedback - any thoughts on implementing this tech (not rumble) into the analog sticks? What would it take to make that happen? And would you as a gamer pay for/appreciate what it brings to the table?

My main concerns would be reliability and battery life, if they could solve those issues it would be a great addition.

 

[Arwin]

Exactly - not just for the sake of autocentering but because the force against the tires (without your forcing it in any direction) would have an affect on the wheel.

Still don't get it. If you've seen the Driving Force Pro wheel auto-calibrate, you know it can do this, regardless of if games actually support it (if you let a car run off a hill and crash in GT and let the wheel go, you'll see that the wheel follows the tires around nicely). And it does this everytime you boot up a PS2 game that supports it, so you'd have to have absolutely no experience with this wheel not to know.

As for the other question, give me a good game that makes use of it, and I'll think about it. Right now though I think it'd be far too expensive anyway.

 

[TheChefO]

Still don't get it. If you've seen the Driving Force Pro wheel auto-calibrate, you know it can do this, regardless of if games actually support it (if you let a car run off a hill and crash in GT and let the wheel go, you'll see that the wheel follows the tires around nicely). And it does this everytime you boot up a PS2 game that supports it, so you'd have to have absolutely no experience with this wheel not to know.

As for the other question, give me a good game that makes use of it, and I'll think about it. Right now though I think it'd be far too expensive anyway.

not gt4 but other games with ff wheels.

 

[TheChefO]

My main concerns would be reliability and battery life, if they could solve those issues it would be a great addition.

battery life would be a biggie ... but they could impliment a ff-lite so to speak. sorta like the rumble on the wireless 360 pad. A bit more subdued but it would give you the effect which I find 100x more important/impressive than rumble or tilt. Actually with it only being your thumb controlling it would have to be subtle so it wouldnt interfere with gameplay too much.

 

[Phil]

This was Sony's dumbest move in my opinion. I could live with the price. But why be a stubborn bastard and take away a feature that gamers demand like rumble/force feedback?

While I agree that going against this Immersion didn't seem like the best solution they could have picked, to call it the dumbest move without knowing what Immersion was/is charging them to continue to use rumble in their controllers is taking it a bit far IMO.

If we're talking about a small fee with reasonable prices for a licence for all future DS (plus the ones from the 200 million controllers they shipped already), I'm sure they would have taken it. For some reason though, I think it isn't far fetched to believe that Immersion has Sony at the balls with this lawsuit and that they may be charging a rediculous amount of money + penalty fine that Sony isn't willing to pay. Seeing that Immersion is now partly owned (?) by Microsoft, would this be too far fetched to believe?

 

[TheChefO]

Seeing that Immersion is now partly owned (?) by Microsoft, would this be too far fetched to believe?

not at all - wouldn't you do the same in their position?

 

[cthellis42]

I think he's talking about FF as implemented in a steering wheel:

I know, but why would the two be connected, unless the implementation were effectively the same? As I imagine controller rumbling work one way and the wheel another (or the rumble would be a very simplified form of a wheel's force feedback), why would one affect the other? Racing sims aren't going to screw over wheel drivers.

Perhaps the games that care about it less won't bother, since the majority won't get any feel at all...

But all things considered, rumble tech has been easily rolled into most games and has been solidly generic and multi-platform for a generation, so I don't see why they wouldn't keep it in. OTHER platforms and SOME peripherals on the PS3 are going to use it still, so...?

It seems like it'd almost be more of a bother to exclude it.

 

[RobertR1]

Exactly - not just for the sake of autocentering but because the force against the tires (without your forcing it in any direction) would have an affect on the wheel.

speaking of force feedback - any thoughts on implementing this tech (not rumble) into the analog sticks? What would it take to make that happen? And would you as a gamer pay for/appreciate what it brings to the table?

On the analog stick you don't have great range of motion, so precision is important. If you had force feedback, you'd be snapping the car around trying to fight the force feedback while trying to do small changes. You could possibly get used to it but it'd take time and the implementation would have to be perfect due to a very limited range of motion.

When will a game dev realize that as cars keep lapping during a race weekend, rubber gets layed down and the track gets faster and faster on the racing line?

 

[TheChefO]

On the analog stick you don't have great range of motion, so precision is important. If you had force feedback, you'd be snapping the car around trying to fight the force feedback while trying to do small changes. You could possibly get used to it but it'd take time and the implementation would have to be perfect due to a very limited range of motion.

When will a game dev realize that as cars keep lapping during a race weekend, rubber gets layed down and the track gets faster and faster on the racing line?

the ability to let the user tweak the amount of feedback would be useful especially for racing games but having it (as you know w/ ff wheels) is very beneficial. I think this tech would be great for any game genre, not just racing.

 

[Acert93]

TIMED exclusive for Madden, the football season starts before the other consoles ship, and for anyone that could hear, they said GTA would launch day one, with exclusive DOWNLOADABLE content.

You may have missed my point. Moore originally had stated "exclusive". Now it has come out that it is a defacto timed exclusive.

But that is my point: MS is doing their PR work. Their job is NOT to do the legwork for Sony. If MS can say, "Madden is exclusive!" they will until someone asks MS, "Timed exclusive?" or asks EA/Sony.

This is exactly what Peter Moore did in a recent interview. He was asked, "But GTA4 is also coming day 1 to the PS3, right?" His response:

"You will have to ask Rockstar about that, all I am concerned with is that GTA4 is coming day 1 to the 360".

I see Kim doing the same thing here. Pronouncing his platforms perks. he is not going to clarify anything that helps his competitor unless asked directly.

 

[scooby_dooby]

You may have missed my point. Moore originally had stated "exclusive". Now it has come out that it is a defacto timed exclusive.

But that's not what he said. If you watch the live feed he said, "GTA wil be available Oct 17 the very first day it's available...blah blah yadda yadda have signed a deal to provide exclusive downloadable content via xblive"

Some journalists took the 'very first day available' quote and ran with it.

He's definately being intentionally vague about it, but he is also very careful with his words.

 

[Acert93]

But that's not what he said. If you watch the live feed he said, "GTA wil be available Oct 17 the very first day it's available...blah blah yadda yadda have signed a deal to provide exclusive downloadable content via xblive"

Some journalists took the 'very first day available' quote and ran with it.

In the above I was talking about Madden which they did specifically say exclusive Yes, I agree that GTA4 was vague and the press ran with it. But that is my point: Be vague, insinuate and let people believe what they want, even if wrong. In a recent interview (Kokami or some site) Moore refused to even say it was coming to another platform. The exchange, from foggy memory:

Press: "But GTA4 is not an exclusive and will be on the PS3?"

Moore: "You will have to ask Rockstar, I don't really know what they are doing. This is what we do know: GTA4 is coming to the 360 on the very first day it launches and it will be the only platform you can play Halo and GTA, the two biggest franchises in our entire industry. You wont be playing both of those anywhere else".

He's definately being intentionally vague about it, but he is also very careful with his words.

Exactly! Gotta love PR!

 

[scooby_dooby]

Well foggy memory for foggy memory, I believe the press question was "Will Rockstar also offer downloadable content for PS3" to which his answer was I dunno.

The madden thing, again from foggy memory, I believe he said something like "when the NFL season starts this summer the only place you can play madden is on 360"

I agree with you though that these are all carefully crafted statement, meant to be vague and misleading, while still being truthful. Gotta love it!