Why Can't Motion and Rumble Get Along?

LifesBlood writes to mention coverage on GameDaily of a contentious controller-related issue. Kaz Hirai, SCEA's president, is claiming there is no rumble in the SIXAXIS controller because of prohibitive cost issues. President of Immersion Corporation Victor Veigas, on the other hand, disagrees. As the company holding the haptic controller rumble patent, he says that the technology could be included for a very reasonable price. From his statements: "If you remember, the day after they announced they were going to take vibration out of their controller I said that we'd be happy to work with them to solve the technical problem, and our engineers in less than a day had come up with three solutions; one is filtering and the other is processing and neither one is incrementally an increase in the cost. Both are using software to filter out the different commands--tilt vs. vibration--so that both can work side by side, and neither solution will add an increase to the cost of the system... We knew how to technically solve their problems and now we know how to do it without adding any incremental cost."

Strategic feature removal

[0x15e (961860)]

Hirai says they're removing the technology the consumer doesn't really need so they can make it more affordable. That makes perfect sense in context, don't you think?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to let you in on a little secret:

The Wiimote costs a lot more to produce than the PS3 controller, because the Wiimote has more technology (3 Axis accelorometer, 3 axis gyroscope, 3d-position detection, IR/UV sensor, Rumble, Speaker, Wireless interface, Wired add-on interface, etc.) and Retailers have the same mark-up on both controllers; so yes Sony is cutting back features to increase their margin.

The question is why did Sony drop the Rumble feature (which has some value in a gaming system) yet r

Re:

[Masami Eiri (617825)]

Just look at the Game Cube from the passing generation. It has more powerful hardware (by far) than the PS2 and wasn't that far off from what the XBox was capable of... but multi-platform games consistantly looked worse AND lacked features because their proprietary disc format just didn't have the storage that was available on the PS2 and the XBox. Um... what? Have you ever done a side-by-side comparison? The Cube rarely lost to the PS2 in graphics, and with the XBox, it was often a toss-up. The disc als

Re:

[twistedsymphony (956982)]

IIRC the PS2 used up a lot of space for audio because it had problems with audio compression, for instance GTA:SA filled almost a whole DVD on the PS2 while the PC and Xbox versions were almost small enough to fit on a CD.

Re:

[LordVader717 (888547)]

The graphical weaknesses on some multi-format Cube games weren't because of the disc, but because of the fact that the GameCube was a little different in hardware design, and many developers were too lazy to optimize it. It had less RAM for example, but the discs could be accessed faster because of their size, and it used the the very potent 1T-SRAM.

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[twistedsymphony (956982)]

IIRC the only multi disc PS2 titles were on two single layer DVD5 discs because early PS2 units had problems reading information on the 2nd layer of DVD9s. I can't think of any multi disc Xbox 1 games... and actually there were only 3 Xbox 1 games that required the 2nd layer after you got rid of game demos/videos and other unnecessary crap. Jade Empire, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, and Rally Sport Challange 2 all spilled over onto the 2nd layer. Jade empire and RSC2 only spilled over by less then a gig, a

Wrong question

[Chosen Reject (842143)]

I think you mean why can't Sony get along with Immersion? Apparently rumble and motion can get a long fine. Doesn't the Wii have both? Even if it doesn't, Immersion seems to have solved that problem.

Why can't...

[no reason to be here (218628)]

Wii be friends? Why can't Wii be friends? Why can't Wii be friends? Why can't Wii be friends?

(With apologies to War)

Bad sportsmanship

[Jimmy_B (129296)]

Sony decides that including both a motion sensor and a motor would add too much to the cost of an already-too-expensive console, and rumble is out of style anyways. (You don't want rumble in a wireless controller because it's bad for battery life, and the current trend is towards wireless). So rumble is cut from the feature list.

So Immersion Corporation, bitter that they didn't get the contract to design the PS3 controller and sensing an opportunity to gain press, responds by badmouthing Sony. Real professional.

Re:

[earnest murderer (888716)]

(You don't want rumble in a wireless controller because it's bad for battery life, and the current trend is towards wireless). So rumble is cut from the feature list.

I don't know, the Metroid rumble pack doesn't seem to do much to the life of my DS. And the battery is driving a display, backlight, wifi, and processors to boot. I'd have to say power is pretty much a non-issue for a missing rumble feature in the Sony controller.

Not that I'll miss it.

Re:

[Trogre (513942)]

So Immersion Corporation, bitter that they didn't get the contract to design the PS3 controller and sensing an opportunity to gain press, responds by badmouthing Sony.

Well they should fit right in here on /.

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG (946591)]

"So Immersion Corporation, bitter that they didn't get the contract to design the PS3 controller and sensing an opportunity to gain press, responds by badmouthing Sony. Real professional."

Bitter that they didn't get the contract, or bitter because Sony blamed their technology over reasons that were correctable?

Sony should just have said "we wanted to keep costs down."

Re:Bad sportsmanship

[furiousgeorge (30912)]

Lets be clear here:

-Immersion owns some broad patents around rumble
-Immersion sued Microsoft + Sony
-****MICROSOFT SETTLED WITH IMMERSION, AND BOUGHT AN INTEREST IN THE COMPANY
-Sony won't settle over the PS2 (still before the courts), and pulled it from the PS3

This isn't news - it's propaganda from Immersion/MS to try to make Sony look bad. Even if Sony wanted to use it, Immersion/MS would probably make it prohibitively expensive. Sony can't win here, and MS is playing the press game perfectly. Zonk eats it up every time.

Re:

[tbannist (230135)]

Immersion is being used as a cat's paw by Microsoft to attack a competitor. I think Sony doesn't trust a company that's already in bed with Microsoft to the point where they settled a court case with the provision that Microsoft would pay them exactly the same amount as they got from Sony in a court case.

I think Sony's executives are pissed and that the only reason they removed rumble.

Of course, theoretically, couldn't a third party developer release a controller with a rumble feature? Or does the console

Re:

[PygmySurfer (442860)]

You don't want rumble in a wireless controller because it's bad for battery life, and the current trend is towards wireless.

The newly dubbed SIXAXIS can sense tilt functions, and can be plugged in for wired or wireless play. Sony is claiming up to 30 hours of battery life for wireless functionality, which is handled by the Bluetooth wireless standard. Source [gamepro.com]

So, even if rumble HALVED the battery life, that'd still be 15 hours, which I think would be plenty. Plus, I believe the controllers can be plugged i

Re:

[Guppy06 (410832)]

"would add too much to the cost of an already-too-expensive console,"

They should have thought of that when they put in the BluRay drive. I'd wager that it's a little more expensive than rumble motors.

"and rumble is out of style anyways."

It's in both of Sony's competitors.

"You don't want rumble in a wireless controller because it's bad for battery life, and the current trend is towards wireless"

Both of Sony's competitors have rumble and wireless in the same controller. Nintendo even has (more robust) motio

Re:

[justchris (802302)]

It's especially important since Immersion licenses rumble & haptic feedback technology to a number of companies (including Logitech & Microsoft), and their implementation is technically more advanced than what Nintendo uses.

Re:

[ivan256 (17499)]

This used to be true.

The rumble in the DS is every bit as good as anything immersion has ever produced. They peaked with the iFeel, and now they're just a has-been patent clearing house.

Immersion should STFU

[nowayout99 (884320)]

Immersion beat Sony in a rumble patent lawsuit. Sony then removed the rumble from the PS3 controller. Ever since, Immersion has been literally trolling the internet and anybody that'd listen to try to petition Sony to now LICENSE their rumble technology. This merely being the latest example. You got your money, Immersion. You could have settled but you didn't. Now please STFU.

Cost saving measure, eh?

[BinaryOpty (736955)]

Too bad Sony does do the same with the PS3 console itself and BluRay. I'm sure that'd save a lot more money than taking a $1 rumble motor out of their controllers. But I guess out of the love in their hearts for us, Sony has made BluRay a required piece of the PS3 and increased the price $200 while reducing the cost of the controllers $5. Thank you Sony, for having my best interests at heart.

Re:

[drinkypoo (153816)]

Just out of curiousity... when did we drop the idea that a next gen system could really benefit by the increased game storage space granted by a next gen drive?

Who is this "we"? Most DVD games don't take up a full DVD. Only a small handful of games could get significant benefit from being larger than a double-layer DVD, which is already a bunch of storage. It's not like you ever want to include uncompressed data - it takes longer to stream from the media, and the next-gen consoles have craploads of proc

Re:

[BinaryOpty (736955)]

I was merely pointing out Sony's seemingly opposite views of a situation: in one case they put something BluRay into the console which inflates its cost and say "You will want to work harder to buy our console" and then they remove rumble from the controllers and say "We're doing this to save you money!" They can't have it both ways: either they want it to be a premium console that people are willing to dip into savings for or they want it to be cheap enough for the common man. So I was calling them out on

Good Grief

[BruceTheBruce (671080)]

I don't really care to hear about it every time the president of Immersion makes some pithy comment about how stupid Sony is for leaving the rumble out of the Playstation controller because he's missing the dumptruck loads of money it would have fetched him. Frankly, I've never been 'immersed' any further in a game because the controller shook in my hands, I've always disabled it, and on the slim chance I purchase a PS3 anytime soon I definitely won't miss it. That said, Sony has made some fantastically r

Re:

[tbannist (230135)]

I've seen this argument enough now, to decide that the people who make it are either stupid or deliberately stupid. We all know the blu-ray drive is an essential part of their greater strategy. It's a "core feature" so to speak, you can't cut core features from a product. Rumble is not a core feature. It's being cut for 2 reasons, one it would cost more to create and test the controller with rumble and they'd have to pay Immersion a royalty for each controller. Combine with the fact that Immersion is f

Sixaxis

[MeanderingMind (884641)]

There have been arguments concerning the "Sony just threw this together" controller stating that Sony had a patent for the tilting technology in the controller many, many years ago. The argument is that Sony couldn't have just copied Nintendo because they had the technology for the controller so long in advance and the functions of the two companies' controllers are vastly different.

For a while, I was willing to accept that argument. I didn't agree with it, my own feeling from watching the Sony E3 conference being that Sony was trying to take some wind out of Nintendo's sails, but I didn't consider it worthwhile to argue against.

However, the shenanigans involving the rumble feature suit and its sudden removal shortly thereafter, while circumstancial, only reinforce the perception that Sony's version of events isn't what they say it is.

I'm not compelled to believe that Sony actually had planned the Sixaxis controller well in advance when it unnecessarily removed a previous key feature, and seemingly mimicked Nintendo's controller. It doesn't help that Sony waffled about what online service they'd have, giving the perception they were only doing it to be able to say, "We have internet gaming too" at Microsoft. It really doesn't help that after ridiculing Microsoft's two separate packages Sony did the same thing. They say they "Don't care" about Microsoft and Nintendo, but all of the circumstances and coincidences tell a different story.

I'm not against the Sixaxis controller and I know a lot of people who dislike rumble anyway. What I am against is being treated like an idiot (regardless of whether I am or not), as most self-respecting people are. The whole deal feels like Sony is trying to pull a fast one, and that's a bad feeling. Were it just a couple of things that felt this way I wouldn't care so much. However, when everything that comes straight from the horse's mouth breathes of contempt for me and my intelligence, and only smells of greed for my dollars...

I wish Sony well, I just wish they could do something to restore my faith that they're honest.

Re:

[Phil246 (803464)]

they could sell you a laptop battery and then tell everyone around you to run before it explodes i suppose?

Cost/Benefit

[The Dalex (996138)]

Let's say it costs Sony $1 more per controller with rumble... that could be $100 million or more over the life of the console. How many sales will Sony lose by ignoring rumble altogether? I'd be very surprised if it was more than a dozen, or even one. Sony made the right move, even though it is probably for the wrong reasons.

Re:

[Grave (8234)]

Actually a lot of surveys have said that people are very upset by the lack of rumble. While the lack of rumble alone may not be a deal breaker for a lot of people, it is for many the straw that broke the camel's back.

To be honest, I severely dislike the PS3 controller -- it's so lightweight without the rumble motors now that it feels awkward. The only positive is that the lower two L and R buttons are now triggers, just like the 360 controller.

Re:

[justchris (802302)]

And what about the PS4, Xbox 720 & Wii Too? We've got motion sensing, a speaker in the controller, and rumble. You don't think Nintendo, the masters of remodeling controllers, are just going to stop at that, do you? The next addition to controllers is most likely to be true haptic feedback, which is about 100x better than simple force feedback. And Immersion owns 90% of the patents to that technology. Perhaps Sony should be worrying about what it's going to cost them to get back into Immersion's go

But...how?

[O'Laochdha (962474)]

Everyone's talking about the cost of reconciling the functions (which I assume mostly goes into labor). How do they actually propose to reconcile the functions, however? If I'm not mistaken, the rumbling caused by most mechanisms is designed to be difficult to predict precisely. So the only way to block it is to take down functionality completely for a second, or at least desensitize it. That's got to be annoying. Alternatively, the rumbling can be simplified, but that's not much better. Even beside t

Re:

[hibiki_r (649814)]

I don't know the details, but it's pretty obvious that it's doable. Nintendo, for one, has motion sensing and rumble working just fine in the Wii remote.

Re:

[apoc06 (853263)]

nintendo's remote can do both because they also have a sensor bar to gather directional information from. also, given that the remote is apt to losing focus every so often, perhaps that is a by product of the rumble tech? who knows?

personally, i would rather not have rumble than deal with the sensor bar and calibration issues for each game. that said, in a perfect world i would want both.

if immersion has such superb motion/ rumble technology, i am most certain that they will release their own version of the

Re:

[Alizarin Erythrosin (457981)]

IMO, you don't need to reconcile the 2 functions. If the controller is rumbling, its for a reason, right? Your character has been hit by a gunshot, your car has gone offroad (think Gran Turismo 4), etc. So, your actions will supposedly be affected by the in-game action. Plus, when the controller is vibrating, you're holding it. Thus it dampens the vibration, reducing the sensed jitter.

Time for my Crappy Example(tm):
You're driving in GT4, and put one wheel off the track. The controller rumbles a bit, and thi

Since when?

[tpemble (941481)]

Since when has Sony cared about their products being too expensive? They've always seemed to have the attitude that they can put whatever price they want on something and it will still sell. Not that it's a bad thing, but this seems to go against previous decisions.

Is it just a marketing ploy?

Sony would be stupid...

[Mark Maughan (763986)]

to license technology from a company that sued them over a patent as idiotic as a vibrating controller. Any dildo manufacturer could think of that. I'd be upset if they did license the technology, just as I am upset that Apple has licensed the use of Amazon.com's 1-click patent.

I don't want Sony to feed the patent trolls.

And by the way, filtering out vibrations at _known_ frequencies from motion data is also trivial and not deserving of a patent.

filter? acceptable errors?

[gabebear (251933)]

Software filtering seems like it might work, but it would have to screw with the precision. The cost of rumble doesn't just include the cost of fixing the problem but also the actual mechanisms that rumble, like a higher capacity battery, motors, and weights. I wouldn't doubt that a rumbling controller with similar battery life would cost twice as much to make. The SIXAXIS seems like the best controller for the next-gen consoles. The 360' controller is just boring and the rechargeable batteries cost extra.

Re:

[masklinn (823351)]

The WiiMote looks really neat, but it doesn't come with rechargeable batteries either and it will require line-of-site to get it's X,Y,Z positional info.

Holy astroturfing batman!

• The Wiimote requires LoS for absolute positioning, which the PS3 controller cannot do
• The Wiimote also packs "six axis" accelerometers and gyroscopes, which means that it's fully as able as the PS3 controller when it doesn't use the Sensor Bar, and works over bluetooth only.
• Fun thing is, the Nunchuck also packs "six axis" acc

Re:

[gabebear (251933)]

I'm guessing by "LoS" you mean "Location of Service", which is just another way of saying the Wii-Mote triangulates its X,Y,Z position in space via infra-red. While it's not confirmed I doubt the Wii-mote also has accelerometers for XYZ because they would get interference by the rumble feature (one of them would have to be anyway). Triangulating the position of the remote via an infra-red bar is one way to counter putting rumble in the remote, but it does have the drawback of needing to have line-of-site to

Re:

[masklinn (823351)]

I'm guessing by "LoS" you mean "Location of Service

No, I mean "Line of Sight", as in "the wiimote has to "see" the console

While it's not confirmed I doubt the Wii-mote also has accelerometers for XYZ

It's been comfirmed since like the dawn of times that the wiimote packs accelerometers AND gyrometers AND an infrared pointing device. And had you used your brain for a second, you'd have realized that the Wii Tennis demos aren't even possible without accelerometers.

And it's also been comfirmed that usin

How many solutions?

[nebbian (564148)]

...and our engineers in less than a day had come up with three solutions; one is filtering and the other is processing and neither one is incrementally an increase in the cost.

(emphasis mine)

Errr... 1 + 1 = 3 now?

Right, THREE SOLUTIONS

[Rolman (120909)]

"[...]our engineers in less than a day had come up with three solutions; one is filtering and the other is processing and neither one is incrementally an increase in the cost."

There are three kinds of people in the world; those who can count and those who can't.

Re:

[smbarbour (893880)]

They just aren't telling you the third, and likely patented under the stupid patent scheme, solution...

Not including rumble in the controller.

Just wait 'til Immersion hits them with a patent on that!

Correct me if I'm wrong

[thelonestranger (915343)]

I might be wrong on this (and I probably am so feel free to call me out on it) but doesnt the Wii use some kind of sensors attached to the top of your TV screen to triangulate the position of the controller while the PS3 controller actually uses tilt sensors built into the controller itself. Perhaps this is why the Wii can get away with using rumble without interfearance.

Re:

[masklinn (823351)]

I might be wrong on this (and I probably am so feel free to call me out on it) but doesnt the Wii use some kind of sensors attached to the top of your TV screen to triangulate the position of the controller while the PS3 controller actually uses tilt sensors built into the controller itself.

Not exactly.

Nintendo's approach uses two flavours of movement detection: the first is accelerometers & gyroscopes, just what Sony uses on the PS3. The Wiimote has them, and the nunchuck also has them, which means

Three solutions? Also why it is prohibitive..

[-Neko- (67564)]

Three solutions.. one is filtering and the other is processing.. .. that's TWO solutions.

Also while the rumble filter would not cost anything, surely LICENSING IMMERSON CORP'S PATENT is pretty expensive in the first place. Easier not to have the technology at all than have to pay for it, and then pay for engineering time on all thr^H^Hwo solutions..

Re:

[meringuoid (568297)]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that the lack of this feature will dissappoint, as I know a lot of gamers who prefer having the rumble feature.

Gravis Eliminator Shock.

Project64.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Epona.

Numb hands.

I don't know if the original N64 rumble pack was that powerful, but the one Gravis packed into that little beast was truly ferocious.

Re:

[drinkypoo (153816)]

I don't move the controller around involuntarily, but I do dodge in my chair.

Rumble is unfortunately a necessity for some games, which use it as an important feature. Luckily you'll be able to plug in a GC controller.

Re:

[Hes Nikke (237581)]

Rumble is unfortunately a necessity for some games, which use it as an important feature. Luckily you'll be able to plug in a GC controller.

Wait, you can plug a Game Cube controller into the PS3?! or are you talking about the wii? in that case, the Wii controller DOES rumble (and has sound to boot!) - though the nuncuck atachment doesn't rumble.

Re:

[EvilFrog (559066)]

The funny part is that the GC Wireless controller (the Wavebird- the best controller I've ever owned, and the first Wireless controller that actually got it right) doesn't have Force Feedback either. And I've never cared. It's still a fantastic controller, and it not vibrating has never negatively affected my game-playing experience.

Re:

[drinkypoo (153816)]

Well, I wasn't buying a PS3, and for some reason I thought the wiimote also lacked rumble. Personally I plan to disable it in any game that doesn't need it, blah blah blah. Anyway, you probably WILL be able to plug a GC controller into your PS3, with an adapter. There might be one already. I have one that lets you do the reverse in the current generation; it takes a PS2 controller and lets you plug it into Xbox, Gamecube, or PC (USB, but not standard HID-class unfortunately.) And ultimately, I wasn't payin