TrueJournals

BREAKING: Microsoft’s New Controller Lacks Rumble

by on Jun.04, 2009, under thoughts

Rumble is a pretty hot topic among game controllers.  When the Sony announced that the PS3 controller wouldn’t have rumble, gamers and bloggers got angry.  Joystiq gives a perfect example of this, summarizing the opinions of others.  And while the general consensus was that rumble wouldn’t hurt Sony, it would just help them if they had it, it’s still a shame to see a company remove such a nice gaming feature.

Three years later, in walks Microsoft.  Perhaps you’ve heard of Project Natal.  It’s an interesting concept.  Instead of forcing you to hold a control, sit down and play your video games, we’ll FORCE you to stand up and fight your opponents like a man.  Microsoft looked at the success of the Wii, and basically said, “We can take this one step farther…”  If it works well, and Microsoft can keep the price point low, then I have a feeling it will go over big.  If not, then it’ll flop and be part of gaming history, much like the Power Glove and Sega Activator.

However, there’s a strange point that all the articles I’ve read have been missing.  Without a controller to hold, there will be no rumble, no force feedback.  And while, for the most part, this is really just a novelty… There are some games that might be lacking without this crucial detail.  Yet, the blogosphere hasn’t exploded.  In just three years, the Internet has gotten over the joy of having rumble in a controller.

Maybe we never really needed it to begin with, and Sony just showed us this by removing it.  Personally, I’ve never used a PS3, but if the consesus was that it wasn’t a critical point, then that’s not what’s hurting its sales.  Or, maybe, Microsoft just can’t do any evil in the gaming world.  Sure, Microsoft is evil in the computing world… but they seem to be a god in the gaming world, much like Apple is a do-no-evil god in the computing world.

So, what will come out of this?  Maybe we’ll start to see more controllers without rumble.  Rumble hit it big, but maybe the novelty is dying off now, and we realize that we don’t really need rumble to play a good video game.  Or, perhaps Microsoft’s “controller” will flop, and systems will still keep rumble in their controllers.  Of course, Natal could always flop AND we lose rumble in controllers.  Only time will tell.

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1 Comment for this entry

  • Tom Frey

    Just a small point here. PS3 did eventually implement rumble in the dual shock 3, mostly due to fan and press outcry. while Natal as it is called (and sadly will be stuck being called… dumb name) will have no rumble support, there is no real good way to implement it there. If you look a little deeper, most of the Natal supported beta testing is around gesture recognition for navigating menus, and voice recognition. having a conversation with a character shouldn’t have rumble support. Natal will have to be very carefully implemented by Microsoft in order to take off. They have said publicly as well that they are not trying to replace modern controllers. merely to compliment them in games where such motion and voice support would seem logical.

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