Nintendo unveils the Revolution(ary) controller

Post by **zewulf** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:20 am

Just a few links to wet your appetite

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-1 ... lashtop_bg
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/09/15 ... 33335.html
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/15/comment ... tm?cnn=yes

IGN has a bunch of articles on this already:

http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275p1.html
http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651224p1.html
http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651301p1.html
http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651334p1.html
http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651304p1.html
http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651309p1.html
http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651317p1.html

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:24 am

lol ridiculous

Post by **MKJ** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:26 am

sighs, another gimmick

i want to be able to control, not flip the channel.
gyroscope and 3d pointing? i hope that can be turned off. what if im lying on the couch on a lazy sunday and my game gets all messed up cos im not sitting up right?

*cue fanboy eraser to set us all straight*

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:27 am

exactly. sorry, but most gamers are lazy c*nts and can't be bothered to be moving their arms around "casting poles" or "pointing weapons" for more than a couple of minutes. what absolute crap.

Post by **R00k** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:44 am

I hope it doesn't turn the whole console into a gimmick. Like the Power Glove.

Post by **Eraser** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:46 am

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=60913

People said the DS was a gimmick as well and right now I can't imagine being able to play the games I have without a stylus.

I think that you shouldn't see this controller as something that you have to hold still and rotate to move your character in traditional games. I think it works more like a "magical" want, where movements in a 3D space trigger certain actions.

Also, don't forget that Gamecube controllers plug into the revolution as well. This will allow for playing traditional games as well, so there's no reason to say the Revolution will fail because of this.

I for one am very highly interested in what developers will do with this sort of technology. It's certainly far more interesting than boasting polygon counts of yet another metal gear solid or final fantasy 68.

Post by **Eraser** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:47 am

+JuggerNaut+ wrote:exactly. sorry, but most gamers are lazy c*nts and can't be bothered to be moving their arms around "casting poles" or "pointing weapons" for more than a couple of minutes. what absolute crap.

Bullshit.
Eye toy has been the most popular peripheral ever, and there gamers have to move their entire body. The dance mats have been popular as well.

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:48 am

you'll see.

Post by **Eraser** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:49 am

MKJ wrote:sighs, another gimmick
i want to be able to control, not flip the channel.
gyroscope and 3d pointing? i hope that can be turned off. what if im lying on the couch on a lazy sunday and my game gets all messed up cos im not sitting up right?

*cue fanboy eraser to set us all straight*

Yes I will set you straight, as I believe, like I said, it's not only gyroscopic but relative movements in a 3D space. The Eurogamer article describes it like that as well. So if you're not sitting up right, it's no problem. You can sit upside-down and backwards if you'd like and still have no problems controlling the game. And hey, in it's base configuration, this is a one-handed controller, leaving the other hand to do.... well... other things.

Post by **Eraser** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:56 am

Post by **r3t** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:59 am

I actually think this controller idea is briljant. It's basically a 3D pointing device, capable of detecting it's relative movements in 3D space, and it's also able to detect roll, yaw and pitch! That will make for one BADASS FPS controller.
Imagine this... main controller in one hand, controlling looking up/down and left/right (like the mouse now), and in the other hand an analog stick device. And then the shotgun... you reload it by flicking the controller quickly up and down, just like you see it done in Doom I and II!

Post by **Eraser** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:01 am

lol

http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/651/ ... ids_1.html

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:03 am

is there any info on the design of the gyroscope? Can the ball spin in any direction or is it constrained to an axis or two?

Post by **r3t** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:06 am

From what I understand it will detect movement in all directions and axis. From shacknews:

Control itself will make use of some kind of spacial movement recognition. The controller will understand movement in all six directions (up, down, left, right, forward, backward) as well as rotation clockwise and counter-clockwise.

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:10 am

What about pitch though?

I think the 6 directions are done through sensors, and the tilting is done through gyro.

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:13 am

also, even if it has pitch, it may not be a fully free rotating ball. A mouseball freely rotates in all directions.

Ideally you'd want to be able to tilt diagonally (so a combination of roll and pitch) and have the hardware be able to translate this unique angle into data, just like a mouse- or trackball does.

Post by **r3t** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:14 am

it's funny, until now I was not really knowing what to expect of the Revolution, and all the talk about releasing old games on it had me kinda bummed. But this, this is just awesome. The whole range of new and (truly) revolutionary game ideas is mind boggling. I really could not care less about "another faster GPU". New ideas like this is where it's at!

Post by **Eraser** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:15 am

[xeno]Julios wrote:What about pitch though?

I think the 6 directions are done through sensors, and the tilting is done through gyro.

yes that's correct.

Post by **r3t** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:18 am

This is from the IGN hands-on (http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275p1.html):

# 3D Pointing. Sensors understand up, down, left, right, forward and backward.
# Tilt Sensitive. Controller can be rotated or rolled from side-to-side.

It seems it detects 2 axis of movement and 3 dimension.

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:21 am

r3t wrote: I really could not care less about "another faster GPU". New ideas like this is where it's at!

nicely said

Post by **MKJ** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:23 am

Eraser wrote:
MKJ wrote:sighs, another gimmick
i want to be able to control, not flip the channel.
gyroscope and 3d pointing? i hope that can be turned off. what if im lying on the couch on a lazy sunday and my game gets all messed up cos im not sitting up right?

*cue fanboy eraser to set us all straight*
Yes I will set you straight, as I believe, like I said, it's not gyroscopic but relative movements in a 3D space. The Eurogamer article describes it like that as well. So if you're not sitting up right, it's no problem. You can sit upside-down and backwards if you'd like and still have no problems controlling the game. And hey, in it's base configuration, this is a one-handed controller, leaving the other hand to do.... well... other things.

if i hold my controller tilted, the game will detect such, right?

so in other words, yes i can sit every way i want and there will be no problem, as long as i hold the controller horizontal.
thats a bitch

Post by **DooMer** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:25 am

Thats pretty goddamn sweet. people still play pc games even though you have to move your mouse around.

Only bad thing is that theres only like 2 buttons. xbox360 and ps3 have like 23213123 buttons. It will probably lack even more in the game department than the n64 and gamecube ever did.

Post by **o'dium** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:27 am

Nintendo does it again!

(i.e. fucks up)

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:28 am

r3t wrote:This is from the IGN hands-on (http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275p1.html):

# 3D Pointing. Sensors understand up, down, left, right, forward and backward.
# Tilt Sensitive. Controller can be rotated or rolled from side-to-side.
It seems it detects 2 axis of movement and 3 dimension.

maybe one axis of movement, since it only registers side to side movements? Imagine turning m_pitch to 0 in quake. That's basically how much freedom of motion this ball seems to have.

I guess pitching (or tilting downwards/upwards) would add engineering problems, since the front of the controller would also activate the movement sensors.

Anway, from a neuromuscular perspective, perhaps being able to register roll independently of downward movements would be a problem: people might like to actually make downward movements by flicking their wrist since it takes less energy and has more precision than moving your whole arm downward.

Imagine in quake that you had to move your whole forearm to control the mouse in order to aim, and that if you used your wrist to move the mouse, the game would respond differently. Would make fast twitch movements kinda impossible.

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:30 am

DooMer wrote:people still play pc games even though you have to move your mouse around.

bad analogy