The same company that brought us the NES Advantage has proven the Wii control scheme isn’t as bad as critics speculated. The beauty of adding the “waggle” technology is limiting your button count to a reasonable level without overwhelming gamers.
We’re seeing casual gaming on the rise both in the press and in the public. Yet, each “next generation” console brings new features and functionality to the consoles, games and accessories. Since NES birthed the SNES we’ve seen button count increase on controllers.
Nintendo has usually been conservative on buttons, trying to work “shape” over sheer volume of buttons, barring the C button count on the N64 controller. Nintendo controllers change shape with each generation and they’ve evolved, not innovated, their way around with the Wii control scheme. Each function of the controller exists, on its own, in other products but nobody has built a fully functional controller in such a way for a game console until now.
Sony took pieces of this concept in their PS3 controller and its ability to detect “tilt.” Xbox 360 stuck with the beefy controller with lots of buttons and analog sticks. Not just a D-Pad but two analog sticks and a ton of buttons to press, some pressure sensitive as well. What of our next-generation console? Maybe a few new buttons?
Or, maybe a few new motions? Wii evolved the control scheme and Sony validated their decision, what’s next? Are the controllers just too damn complicated in today’s world? Or, perhaps limiting the buttons brings in more gamers, like Grandma and Grandpa, to play your console as well.
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No Paul again, you know the drill.
Lately I’ve been ignoring all these articles just spewing out rumors day after day, hoping one of them will be right. First, IGN comes out with “Report: BOTH New Xbox and PS4 Will Be Shown At E3”. The very next day they wrote that an analyst said none of the consoles will be shown. And now yesterday, they came out with “Microsoft or Sony To Quit Console Race?”. Seriously guys, stop guessing and just wait for E3 for goodness sake.
And also I hate when they say an “analyst” says so. Oh, it must be true then because this guy gets paid to “analyze”.
@Rumor: Next Xbox tablet-based?: Even though the Wii-U will be sort of tablet-based, I think that Microsoft wouldn’t be able to pull it off and will just end up sucking.
hey guys… hope you can read this before recording the 247th!
@ps4 and 720: I hope they will be announced at this next e3 but i am ready for dissapointment. and yes, if the ps4 do not have some awesome co-funtionality with the vita, sony will be effectivelly killing the it
@diablo auction houses: not only south coreia: you guys talked about south coreia and russia, but you did forget about the prisoners in china gold farming in WoW who are obligated to do it (a few months old podcast). sad stuff
@SOPA: i am a brasilian gamer who has warned all american friends to help not passing this bill project because it will affect not only US but all the world. i like the machinima channel on youtube. SOPA would kill them
@before last week’s QOTW: my only handheld console is my trusty dark DS lite and i play on it since it lunched and still love it!!! SO SHINNY
my most played game of 2011 was CoD MW2 and BF3. i know.. the controversy…
the most surprisingly fun game was terraria most preciselly after patch 1.1.
most dissapointing is Black ops (not even 100h of gametime according to steam)
LOVE YOU GUYS, KEEP IT UP!!!
I’ve heard happier versions of Jonah before.
@Gaming Flashback:
Ha ha ha 🙂
The game was mentioned before, but Jordan made this particular flashback entertaining. The other 9 games? Please make a list.
@Fallout MMO rights belong to Bethesda as Interplay settles
Well, I guess Interplay got what it aimed to get. Jonah, it’s not the ‘wrong people won’. When you sell your IP, you won’t be able to make games on it. They should have known that before selling out to Bethesda.
Yes, they had some provisions in the contract allowing them to use the name for an MMO. That’s just not enough though. Interplay should have known better.
@ Next Xbox tablet-based?
No. They want to use PC-like hardware, so that they don’t have to worry too much about software. Plus, the more components (tablet, base station etc etc) the more expensive. So, no.
They will make it more slim, I suppose. Heck, even add a touch screen front panel. But that’s it.
@Diablo III release held due to South Korea (from GameFront)
Erm … yeah, I guess it a bit more difficult to foresee all legal difficulties, especially when you need to keep an eye on all the countries you want to ship …
@QOTW – hardware specs, as asked by your reader:
My ‘modern’ machine is a single core Sempron 3000+, 1.5 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 4650. 🙂 Pretty ancient.