Last time we posted an excerpt from our chat wit Sony’s worldwide studios boss Phil Harrison, he told us about his views on the controversial Blu-Ray drive. This time out, we asked him about another hotly debated topic - the new control pad, which looks much like a wireless version of the old DUAL SHOCK 2 pad, but actually lacks the very feature which gave that pad its name, namely the rumble motor. Instead, it packs in a system which can sense how you’re tilting and moving the pad - hence the new name, SIXAXIS.
That’s all very well, but players accustomed to the rumble functionality for nearly ten years were outraged when Sony dropped the feature. So has the company had second thoughts about the decision to ditch rumble?
“None whatsoever,” Harrison tells us firmly. “Not at all.”
Well, that’s confident. So what makes him so certain that the SIXAXIS pad is better than its predecessor, despite lacking the force feedback?
“I think that the next generation interfaces that can be created built on SIXAXIS motion sensitivity give tremendous gameplay benefits that far outweigh a reactive vibration function,” he explains. “The vibration function is the game sending a single channel of feedback to the player - six axis of input puts the player in control in a much richer, deeper way. So, game design can go in much more interesting directions as a result of that than from receiving a single input from the game itself.”
Fair enough, but there’s a rather obvious counter-point to that - couldn’t Sony have built both rumble and motion sensing into the same pad? A company called Immersion, which makes rumble and force feedback technology, fanned the flames of controversy by pointing out that contrary to mutterings from Sony, this is perfectly possible, technically - so why doesn’t the SIXAXIS pad make everyone happy by doing both things?
“I think the caveat to that statement always has to be based on the fact that when we make a pad, we’re making maybe 150, 200 million of them,” Harrison tells us. “So it has to be done at a price, and it has to be done at a volume that fits our production requirements. I think the decision that we’ve made to build in the SIXAXIS functionality, and Bluetooth wireless, and great battery life, and all the other functionality that comes with it, far outweighs the chatter that we’re getting on vibration. And, it’s incredibly light! Just pick it up!”
Whatever about the questions of cost and volume - granted, it’s nice to see a straight answer on that front, and we’d rather not see hugely expensive controllers on the system, but a lot of players might be happy to pay a premium to get rumble back - he’s certainly got a point about the weight of the pad. Picking it up, it’s feather-light - so much so that we’d be convinced that it was just a hollow plastic model, if we hadn’t been playing MotorStorm with it only minutes previously. It feels great to hold and play games with - but only individual gamers will be able to judge if they’re happy with the shake and rattle being sacrificed for the roll.
By Rob Fahey (Eurogamer.net)
No rumble? WTF? Geez… This really will lower my chances to get one of these consoles
Comment by buy a ps3? — Oct 26, 2006 @ 4:56 pm
[…] So there you have it folks, Sony is happy that it has dropped the rumble. Source: [ThreeSpeech] […]
Pingback by You NEWB » Blog Archive » Harrison defends PS3 pads — Oct 26, 2006 @ 5:07 pm
Can someone please explain what the big deal is about taking the rumble out of the handset??? it’s lighter, now has a load more functions with the six axis and connects via bluetooth… seems to me that people are getting more pleasure out of this than myself, perhaps you’ve found a use for it that i’m not yet aware of?! thinking premiership footballers and mobile phones?
Comment by Spotz222 — Oct 26, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
i would like to know more about the cell/RSX rendering techniques possible.
can you use the cell as a vertex shader? which would mean that the xbox360 graphics wise would be extremely lame.
because a CPU in quite a few cases is a better vertex shader then a GPU.
Comment by mark — Oct 27, 2006 @ 1:37 am
Phil is right, you are going from one type of immersion technology to another. Once you get over the shock of having no vibration, you’ll probably not even think about it. I bet even when you used an Analog Controller (DUALSHOCK 2) you found yourself leaning or moving the controller to steer around bends in the road etc. You’ll be doing the same but without the vibration, no great loss.
Comment by Mark — Oct 27, 2006 @ 8:45 am
More control over the game world can only be a good thing. I cant wait to snap a enemy neck by twisting the pad violently. but being able to feel them struggle via vibrations and then go limp would have been cool.
Comment by Jason — Oct 27, 2006 @ 1:57 pm
Though I’m not hugely concerned about this right now, I still think they are much better off developing and switching to a real Dual Shock 3 after the first year or two of PS3 has gone by and the PlayStation corp is making top dollars again.
Make it the ultimate controller. RD how you could benefit the fps genre from a gamepad standpoint and whatever new thinking comes out of it that works, make it the standard. Have next gen rumble and dear I say it, a speaker as well.
Comment by Wollan — Oct 30, 2006 @ 10:34 am
Originally I was pretty excited about the PS3. I was absolutely drooling about it, and then the unthinkable happened. The PS3 lost its rumble. The only thing that may have been worse was the loss of backward compatability. Originally I was going to wait about six months after the console release to purchase it to work out bugs. But now I think that I will wait for a price drop on the Xbox 360 and purchase it. Some time down the road (a year or two possibly I may also purchase the PS3) Any title offered for both consoles I will purchase the Xbox 360 game because it will have the rumble feature. Now you might think that this might be overly sensitive, but one of the most exciting features when I first purchased the PS2 was the rumble.(I originally had an old Atari immediatelly before it). I have played many of my games with and without the rumble for comparison. There is no comparison between the two experiences. The Sony president says that input is better than response. I think if you gave somebody a kiss and they responded to your input like a piece of stone it would be a quite unsatisfying experience and so will the PS3 without rumble. Sony is making a mistake of Biblical proportions. They will lose way more money in lost revenue from people like me who will purchase Xbox 360 titles instead of PS3 titles when if they sucked up their pride and paid the lawsuit they would never had lost any money to the Xbox 360, because I would have been a captive audience never to try the forbidden fruit of the dark side. Don’t tell Gamers how indispensible a feature is, then treat them like idiots telling them it really was never that important.
Comment by Rick — Oct 31, 2006 @ 3:10 am
Phil’s responses don’t give a “straight answer” at all, as opposed to what this article may claim. Anything said about cost, or volume flies straight in the face of including an HDMI port on the 20GB model. The rumble feature is effectively two motors and two weighted magnets.
No, the real answer that Sony dances around is the fact that Immersion won a settlement in court due to a patent on the vibration technology. PR representatives are likely not allowed to talk about pending litigation. If they’re trying to be upfront about communicating with the public, they could at least acknowledge that yes, it’s also an (ongoing) legal issue.
Frankly, they’ll already be spending at least $90 million anyways, plus additional legal fees for the court case. Sometimes, as Microsoft did, it’s better to “pay the man.”
While it’s not a make-or-break decision for the console’s success, it’s disappointing that among all the talk of “True HD” and Blu-Ray, Sony seems to be stepping back from this one. Third parties probably won’t even be able to fill the void, because there are likely no API’s for generating controller rumble.
Comment by Jake — Nov 2, 2006 @ 5:11 am
Wow a new PS3 site! I like it!
I wanted to ring in on the loss of rumble in PS3. Sony what are you thinking? You need all the sells you can get and this is not the way to get into peoples pockets. Lets say i’m a gamer and I am planning on buying a PS3. I’m young and vunerable to peer pressure. I want a powerful console that I can brag about. Well I wouldn’t care about Blu-Ray or HDMI if i’m still in high school. I could use movie money (blu-ray) as game money. Why would care about 1080p at that age?
See how losing rumble would look to someone who only wants to experience games on the PS3. See how losing rumble make Sony look vunerable to its competition. I can hear it now “$600 for a PS3 and it doesn’t even have rumble.” “What a rip off.” That is what the opposition will use to steal potential sales from Sony.
I do believe that some games will become less immersive without rumble.
Comment by Sony Fanmail — Nov 2, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
All I can think of is how much feel I will be losing when I go to play Tourist Trophy for the first time on my PS3.
I wonder how the developers at Polyphony feel about this.
Maybe the question is being aimed at the wrong people.
How about Namco and their Tekken team of developers?
L-
Comment by Luis Gomez — Nov 2, 2006 @ 6:45 pm
I think that the loss of the rumble is negligible. I can;t remember a game where it even mattered. I mean you;re trying to tell me that if you hit a wall in a racing game it’s more visceral with your controller shaking? Ludicrous. That when you get shot in an FPS the shaking has any impact on how you feel duing gameplay? I don’t think so. I have never felt that it was necessary at all, I even pretty much turn it off if that’s an option. If it was force feedback, maybe, but it’s just twon things shaking…seems pretty lame to me.
Comment by Sventizzle — Nov 2, 2006 @ 10:43 pm
[…] Sites like Eurogamer/Gamesindustry, who are running a series of serialised interviews on the blog. Regardless of either side’s intent, innocent or otherwise, it just doesn’t look cool when a highly respected, independent site starts working all nice and close with a Sony marketing ploy. Luke Plunkett […]
Pingback by Gaming News » Three Speech Muddying the Journalistic Waters? — Nov 2, 2006 @ 10:53 pm
I must say I will be buying a PS3 regardless but think that if it’s gonna be expensive then they should give us the option. They are saying they are doing us a favor by not including it and keeping the prcie low but by not even giving us the option with a seperate purchase is unthinkable since they claim this has nothing to do with the lawsuit.
All they need to do is have the tool set available to devs and a thrid party will step up and sell a controller with rumble. It’s like sony if forcing our hands since by their own admission we could have it but they don’t want us to pay too much. Yeah right. If that was the case they’d have the fully featured controller as a seperate purchase but no as it stands will have to live without rumble this generation or buy games like GTA IV for xbox if we want the full experience.
Thanks for dropping the ball on us. Heck even lil ole Nintendo got motion sensing and vibration in one controller and you guys claim you’ve worked on motion sensing for years. Oh and don’t forget at E3 you had a motion sensing controller with rumble.
Comment by Jman — Nov 3, 2006 @ 1:17 am
If it’s so impossible to have motion sensing and rumble in one controller and be at a reasonable price, then why is Nintendo’s Wii Remote priced $20 less than the Sixaxis, and has both features?
Comment by Don — Nov 3, 2006 @ 1:55 pm
Firstly, the rumble feature DOES make a difference to how immersive the game is. It is a brilliant feature that should be the STANDARD of all game controllers nowadays.
Secondly, no-one, including Phil Harrison seems to have mentioned the obvious battery loss that a rumble feature would bring to a wireless controller.
And Finally, does anyone remember what happened with the original Playstation controller? They of course had a simple digital controller when the console was first released.
Then Namco came along and made the NeGcon. This THIRD PARTY controller could twist in the middle which could be used to steer cars in an ANALOGUE way.
Not to be outdone, Sony lifted their idea and made the Dual Analogue controller. Which was later turned into the Dual Shock.
All i can say to this is that history does repeat itself. I believe it will take a brave third party company to create a Rumble/motion sensing controller. But when this happens, Sony, coupled with a drop in prices, computer game support for this new feature and an end to the legal problem, will produce the SIXAXISDUALSHOCK3.
It is a sad fact that in this situation, companies such as Sony do not listen to the little people, its consumers. They wait to see what the games industry want. If enough games support a rumble feature for some third party controller, then they WILL release an official one to cash in.
Comment by James Banks — Nov 19, 2006 @ 12:02 pm
The rumble has to be there. Sony is being ridiculously arrogant by making such a decision and assuming that the consumers will buy their console and controllers, no matter what.
My thinking is that a complete controller should have both rumble and motion sensing, that what next generation should be about, and only Nintendo has done it. MS and Sony are up there in graphics but they lack next gen controllers.
As someone rightly pointed out on this web site that for a truly immersive experience both the input and response are necessary. Absence of one of them takes away from the experience. So Rumble is a must, it actually should be standard. Motion sensing is the next thing, and then the graphics. All three make for a true immersive and next gen experience.
Right now I see Sony slowly realizing that they are being left behing by MS and Nintendo, and one of the reasons is lack of good games, especially exclusives. So imagine, new developers making games for both MS and Sony, have to incorporate rumble in their games because of the xbox 360 `s rumble capability. And people are going to go for rumble enabled games on 360 and no one would buy PS3 games that are also on 360, because of the rumble. Example baseball games, football games rumble really adds to the experience. Imagine pitching in baseball against your friend on split screen, rumble enables you to throw a ball outside the strike zone without your friend knowing about it, now how would that be accomplished in a ps3? In shooter games, rumble makes the controller vibrate making it more fun (thats why I like FPS on consoles personally, otherwise controlwise you can`t beat mouse/keyboard….but motion sensing might be the answer in that department)
Even Hideo Kojima, creater of metal gear Solid series wishes he had the rumble option when designing the game MGS4.
These things are and will hurt Sony in a race, in which it has had a poor start.
Comment by Abhishek — Jan 29, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
Although the rumble feature will not be included with the first party SIXAXIS pad, allowances should be made for third parties to be able to develop the technology and offer it to PS3 consumers. The rumble feature over the years has proved to be an enjoyable experience for millions of gamers and should not be thrown out.
Augmented reality is surely a positive direction for all console manufactures, the one that use’s and stimulates the most sense will be the most interactive and fun (in theory). The loss of DualShock is a loss of one of those sense and experience, SIXAXIS will sure be a new experience, but a very different one at that.
Either way as a humble European I eagerly wait for the official launch, rumble or not!
Comment by Kal.l — Feb 1, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
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