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PlayStation (Games) Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

PSP Controller Layout, New Details Revealed 70

Posted by simoniker from the but-i-wanted-it-like-the-intellivision dept.
Thanks to IGN Pocket for their article discussing new PlayStation Portable (PSP) details revealed at Sony's Gamers' Day in San Francisco. The article discusses the PSP's controller configuration, which is "...now confirmed to consist of the four face buttons we all know and love (triangle, circle, cross, and square), a digital directional pad, two shoulder buttons (left and right), start and select buttons, and one analog joystick." It also reveals that "Sony compared the 3D prowess of the PSP to be more akin to the PS2 rather than the PSone", and other details emerged - the system's battery life was "...said to be comparable to other high-end devices (roughly 3-6 hours)", and GameSpot's Gamers' Day round-up relays that "a prototype will be unveiled at E3 2004... [and] currently, 10 first-party titles are in development for the new platform."
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PSP Controller Layout, New Details Revealed More

PSP Controller Layout, New Details Revealed

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  • Heh (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember when Sony first talked about the portable Playstation back in 1997.
  • It's unclear from the article if Sony is going to use the same style of directional pad as they do on the Dual Shock/Dual Shock II controllers but I sincerely hope they don't (although they probably will).

    The problem with Sony's directional pad is that it's four distinct buttons whereas the directional pads on Nintendo's controllers (for instance) is a single 'rocker' style pad which makes it a lot easier to transition from one direction to another. It's a minor thing but it drives me nuts. If it wasn't f

    • The Dual Shock use those rocker style pads too except the middle of the pad is under the outer casing. The four directions aren't independent and feels like most other D-pads I've used.

    • They can't because of Nintendo patents. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @04:02AM (#6983946)
      I seem to remember from way back that Nintendo had patented the design of it's D-pad.

      A quick search turned up this [everything2.com] note of the history of the NES controller:

      Yokoi designed something simple that evolved into what is known as the D-pad. Nintendo then proceeded to patent the design of the D-pad.. As a result, a dispute rose up between Nintendo and Sega when Sega used the D-pad design in their Genesis console

      This explains why Sony and Microsoft are unable to copy Nintendo's D-pad design - they'd have the stuffing sued out of them. Instead:

      Sony hid the middle part of rocker underneath the case. Unfortunately their design makes your thumbs bleed after using it for an hour or two.

      Microsoft came up with the circle-with-raised-compass-points design. Unfortunately it's error--prone in that you often hit the diagonals when you don't mean to.

      FYI, my ideal controller would have:

      * Nintendo's D-pad
      * Sony's analog sticks
      * Sony's buttons
      * Sony's DualShock control layout on the front-face (the controls are placed about perfectly for me).
      * Microsoft's Controller-S case and extra-long cable (I find it the most comfortable to hold for long periods of time - just not the best to USE).
      • Yokoi designed something simple that evolved into what is known as the D-pad. Nintendo then proceeded to patent the design of the D-pad.

        This explains why Sony and Microsoft are unable to copy Nintendo's D-pad design - they'd have the stuffing sued out of them. Instead:

        Sony hid the middle part of rocker underneath the case. Unfortunately their design makes your thumbs bleed after using it for an hour or two.

        Microsoft came up with the circle-with-raised-compass-points design. Unfortunately it's error--pron
      • * Nintendo's D-pad
        Too bad they shrunk it so much on the GC...

        * Sony's analog sticks
        Eh, they're ok. I like that they press in but I think GC's is more comfy now. (I'd really like one with a rotating top, so I could play oldschool paddle-controller games or Ikari warrior type things :-)

        * Sony's buttons
        What the latest ones? Are you CRAZY? Those are the mushiest pieces of crap ever. That's way to small an amount to "click" for 256 values...and to make sure I have the things fully pressed (ala for the ga

      • Well, this post caught my attention. =D kisrael made some very good points, with which I agree completely.

        I seem to remember from way back that Nintendo had patented the design of it's D-pad.

        They did. (But Nintendo has pretty much always called it the "+ pad" or something like that - Sega first called it the "D-button.") The patent expired a set number of years after the release of the Famicom (15? in time for the Dreamcast, anyway). The Dreamcast imitated the look, but not the feel, of Yokoi's pa

    • My personal favorite thumb pad controller was for the Sega Master System [cedmagic.com]. Joysticks would be a toss-up between the original Atari and the Epyx 500xj [cedmagic.com], but those broke rather easily.
    • Sorry, I couldn't disagree more. The Playstation pad (actually the DualShock, as I never played a pre-DS machine) was the first ever pad I could reliably use, rather than keeping to machines that had sticks.

      What you see as a problem, because you can't get diagonals easily, I thought was a Godsend, as previously I would constantly push diagonals by accident.

      Mind you, I still prefer zxplm.
    • The true test of a d-pad is how well it plays at Super Metroid. Try doing a wall jumps to climb a large distance (i.e. the part of the game where you get shown how to do the walljump). With a controller with a circular d-pad, you'll be constantly hitting the diagonals as you try to go left to right. With the Sony d-pad, your thumbs are hurting. You really need an SNES style d-pad to do it.

  • Battery Life (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BigDork1001 ( 683341 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @03:05AM (#6983757) Homepage
    and other details emerged - the system's battery life was "...said to be comparable to other high-end devices (roughly 3-6 hours)"

    This doesn't seem like a lot to me. I did a quick Google search and saw that the official stats on the GBA SP give it 10 hours light on/17 hours light off. Now that's three times longer than the PSP. That's pretty significant. They'll have to definatly increase batterly life before I'd look at getting one of these.

    • Re:Battery Life (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb@NOspaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @03:13AM (#6983772) Homepage
      I'm not endorsing 6-7 hours as being a great achievement, but keep in mind that the GBA SP isn't what most people (especially Sony) would consider a high-end device. I expect that they're probably comparing it to portable DVD players and multimedia jukebox-type gadgets.

      • Re:Battery Life (Score:3, Insightful)

        by BigDork1001 ( 683341 )
        True but if I buy a PSP I'm buying it to play games. That's what I look for when I buy a portable gaming device. I don't care about the other fancy stuff as much. While nice it isn't necessary. That's why I like Nintendo's approach to things, they focus on the games and gaming aspects of their devices not fancy doo-dads that aren't the best price and raise the price. If I want a portable DVD player I'll buy a portable DVD player. In the end it'll be better than a hybrid thing that's trying to do several thi

      • Re:Battery Life (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Zed2K ( 313037 )
        Yes but people tend to play portables more hours than it would take to watch a dvd. So if this thing can't last the amount of time for a 2 hour flight and 2 more hours of sitting around waiting for the flight its not gonna fly. If you have to constantly plug it in to keep it charged and are walking around an airport looking for an empty outlet to charge your portable it ends up not being very portable.
      • So in other words, according to your opinion on this, Sony does not consider a portable SNES, which has just about as much processing capability as the PSone, not high-end?
        • No, I don't think they do. Considering that Sony is claiming near-PS2 quality 3D capability, that the PSP will be able (out of the box) to play movies and music as well as games, and that the GBA is under $100, I think they have some right to consider the GBA as something less than a "high-end device." Besides, what would you expect Sony to believe/say about a product that I'm sure they hope will put a beatdown on the GBA?
          • They talked up the PSone like that too. That turned out to have no more capability than the SNES when it launched. I won't expect the PSP to be that much better than the GBA when they come back to earth with a more realistic set of specs. I'll expect to see that about the same time that we actually get to see what it will even look like. Personally, if this thing is anywhere near as powerful as they are touting, they will be laying no beatdown on nitendo, since they will be marketing a handheld gaming p
        • How is an SNES equal to a PSX in processing capability? Even many 2D games on the PSX (not its forte) killed anything the SNES was capable of.

          And a true portable SNES would have 4 face buttons. :)
          • Take a look at their specs sometime. When Nintendo was actually producing the SNES, and marketing it as 16-bit, it was capable of closer to 24-bit. PSone, on the other hand, was closer to 16-bit, and had a halfway decent 3-d graphics processor that helped it along with 3-d graphics processing. That, BTW is the only real reason that it could come close. As far as killing SNES 2-D with its own 2-D? When was the last time you played Mario Land or Super Metroid? Those look WAY better than any side scrolle
            • I don't think you have played enough PSX games. All three of the 2D series you mention are very poor at showing a console's true 2D capabilities, as they are generally slow-paced with very few onscreen sprites. There is NO WAY the SNES could pull off a (completely 2D) game like DoDonPachi, for example. Play the MAME version sometime if you haven't (the game is a classic), and then understand the PSX version has less slowdown. It looks better than a SNES game, it has less slowdown than similar SNES games (ev
    • Well, don't forget the PSP is running a bunch o processors, more inputs, a spinning disc and usb ports along with other things i can't imagine yet.

    • Re:Battery Life (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @04:14AM (#6983982) Journal
      Yah, you did read the article so I guess you missed it. Anyway I am not quit sure I believe it myself.

      The claim is that the 3D performance will be closer to the PS2 then the PS1. Zing. Compare this to the GBA who while a nice console is hardly what you would consider a power monster. Have you seen some of the 3D games on the gameboy? The GBA has pathetic power. Doesn't mean it makes for bad games. It doesn't. But it does mean that anyone going to compete with it better offer something different. Like say more powerfull games? You don't compete by doing exactly the same thing (please pay attention KDE developers) you compete by offering something you hope will be considered superior. Now ask youselve this, how many people who usa a gba really need 10 hours playtime between recharges?

      So they are putting it with HIGH end performance items like laptops. Sure you mobile phone easily has several times the battery life of youre P4 Radeom mobile laptop. On one you play snake on the other you play Quake3.

      You are basically complaining that the McClaren F1 is not as fuel efficient as say a Smart. Duh.

      I for one hope that sony goes for power and options. And simply does what they did with my mini-disc player. Make it top-notch with the simple option of affexing an external battery pack for those occasions you need more battery life. (it is a two AA cell plastic container that screws on to the side. and supplements the encased rechargeable battery)

      Go sony. Go for the high-end market. It is there. I know plenty of gameboy fans who got every color of the bloody thing. They wouldn't think twice about buying a device 2x 3x the price if it gave them performance. Oh and please. Proper lighting this time right? Oh and screw battery life. Just include larger batteries and give us battery packs that can be easily charged and exchanged.

      And while we are at it. Please realise the nature of gameplay on these devices. So no games where the only way to save is writing down a huge string of characters. Save anywhere. It is possible.

      Oh well no doubt the product will be ruined by focus groups who will never even buy it because they got the time to be in focus groups while those of us who can and would buy it are at work.

      End rant.

      • Then again, other companies who have tried for the high-end portable gaming consoles that were comparable to current generation home consoles have failed miserably. Think of the TurboExpress. It was nice, had an optional TV attatchment, and could play the latest TurboGrafix home console games... but you had to use 10 AA batteries that provided a whopping 2 hours of solid gameplay action. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to shell out money for a "portable" gaming device that I can't fit into my pocket and won't
        • Well lets hope that sony who are hardly new to making battery operated equipment can come up with a happy medium.

          Sure 10 AA batteries is bad. But that is because this company probably did not have to capacity to use a better battery pack. Sony has.

          So lets not say that because others did some silly stuff (why use AA batteries at all, how many quality walkmans do use them? Not that many am I right?) doesn't mean Sony has to do it as well. If they are smart they make the console rechargable.You know, like al

      • Re:Battery Life (Score:5, Insightful)

        by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @10:34AM (#6986051)
        Your viewpoint is similar to Sega's when they released the GameGear.

        The GameGear had much lower battery life than the Gameboy. It also had much better graphics, and a color screen.

        People simply wanted good games, without needing to worry too much about batteries. Hence Gameboy won.
      • " The GBA has pathetic power. Doesn't mean it makes for bad games. It doesn't. But it does mean that anyone going to compete with it better offer something different. Like say more powerfull games?"

        Keep in mind that the GameBoy Advance has been quite successful despite having 3 'powerful' systems on the market. Frankly, I'm hapPy about the differentiation between the PSP and GBA. It doesn't sound like they'll directly compete with each other. If the games are so different, why not get both systems?

  • Battery life is suspicious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @03:38AM (#6983868)

    When Sony says "3-6 hours" for other "high-end devices" (like their laptops), in reality it's more like an hour or two. The problem is, this will hurt the PSP. It's one thing to carry a power brick with your laptop; it's entirely another to carry one for your pocket game device.

    The GBA SP, with light on, easily gets 10 hours. It seems like I rarely ever have to charge mine. If I had to charge every three hours, this would be much different.

    It won't stop me from buying one, since I do most of my gaming at home, and it'll probably have a boatload of great games---the main reason for investing in any console---but if they really want to succeed, they should take a good hard look at this.

  • Are we gonna be able to play PS1 games on it? Or are they gonna have to port games to it?
    • It seems to me that with the UMD as the primary media they are boasting for the device, the answer is going to have to be "No".

      My best guesses would be 1) Ports of the best PS1 titles, 2) Some method of copying your original PS1 disc to a UMD (highly improbable), or 3) No option at all.

      If you want a portable PS1, go buy the PS1 with mobile monitor, battery pack, DC car adaptor, etc. The products have been out for a while.

      Backward compatability would be nice, but im guessing that UMD makes this really har
  • One of the reasons that Neogeo and Sega's handhelds failed was because of battery power. Not lack of games, not lack of graphics (because both looked sweet), but lack of battery power. Hasn't Sony learned anything? 3-6 hours (read: 1-2 hours) is absolutely nothing. They've gotta do better than this if they want to compete with the gameboy.

    • Re:No battery power = no sales (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Neo Geo pocket failed because of a complete lack of marketing.

      Game Gear failed because of a lack of (interesting) games. (Sonic and Columns were about the only worthwhile games).

      Lynx failed because of a lack of third party games. Atari wanted tight fisted control over the games that were released, hence only first part games ever came out.

      Also to note, all three handhelds were expensive compared to the GB/GBA.

      Until the GBA Lynx was my favorite handheld. The games were ultra small and ultra portable.
    • And thats just being nice. This is supposed to be a next gen handheld, so what they need to actually do is provice MORE FOR LESS. Meaning, they need more than 10 hrs life with a light on, and they need more power, and it needs to be CHEAPER, and it needs to be SMALLER.

      If it doesn't fit in my pocket, and I can't play it on a plane from New York to London without it running out of power, then why bother? They need 10hrs or more, badly. Or go the way of the gamegear.

  • Joystick (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EyesWideOpen ( 198253 ) <curtis@cusm[ ].com ['ith' in gap]> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @08:19AM (#6984927) Homepage Journal
    ...and one analog joystick.

    I wonder how far this will protrude and if durability will be a problem. I would hesitate to put this in my pocket (or even in a bag without a case) for fear that the joystick would wear unnecessarily.
    • The NeoGeo Pocket has a cavity for its analog joystick so that it doesn't protrude. I've had mine for years, the joystick has worked just fine.
      • The NGP joystick isn't analog, it's 8-way digital.

        You would need a bit of extra room if there's a difference between a little bit left and strong left on an analog stick. They might be able to engineer it to be quite durable, but I think it would stick out a fair bit.
  • I hope they do a lot of 'extended play', I'm worried about 3D games in small screens, especially after reading gamindustry.biz's hands-on review. Check it out here:
    http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?sect ion_name=new&aid=2233
  • Or just plain poor communications between departments?

    Am I alone in thinking it a little strange that Sony announced this device more than a year before they intend to show even the physical shape of it?

    In fact, it seemed that the initial announcement was more of an excuse to show off a new storage medium (which also won't be available for about a year).

    Don't get me wrong: I'm pretty excited about the PsP, and all the possibilities it could offer. I'll probably buy one, but then again, I have a Game.com
    • No, it's the impressive juggernaut that is the Sony Hype Machine. The same Hype Machine which mind you, squelched the Dreamcast. People didn't want to buy a DC because the PS2 was coming out soon, and would graphically blow the DC out of the water, something I'm still waiting for. If Sony let it be known that they're planning a handheld, I would bet it would be to curtail further spending towards Nintendo's product, and get people talking about how much ass their brand-new handheld will kick. 2005 is a ways
      • No, it's the impressive juggernaut that is the Sony Hype Machine.

        It seems that the only way to go up against Sony is to either figure out how to copy their Hype Machine marketing style effectively, or to release competing systems at the exact same time. If your system comes out earlier Sony will convince everyone that theirs will be better and you shouldn't waste money on it. If yours comes out after theirs, well, they've got a much larger install base and more games, so you should clearly go with them.

  • Let's all pay the $$$ to Sony for this great device, so they can turn the profits into protecting their music and movie piracy witch-hunts.

    On a more non-flameworty subject... battery life of 3-6 hours is pretty weak compared to the GBA SP's 10 hours.
  • By the time this device comes out - if it ever does in the USA and Canada, I figure 2006 at the latest - Nintendo will already likely have their next generation handheld out on the market.

    And if it's anything like the past - Nintendo's next hand-held would sport N64 quality graphics.

  • buttons we all know and love ??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by PunchMonkey ( 261983 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @11:39AM (#6986639) Homepage
    Does everyone really love the naming convention of these buttons? It drives me nuts to say "OK, to do this move, press left and the Triangle plus Circle, then Square" when I could say "press left and A B, then X".

    Am I missing out on some lingo here to reference the psx buttons a little more easily?
    • I usually call triangle "tri". That brings it down to a single syllable like all its neighbors. With the exception of triangle, it doesn't take any longer to say the name of the button with a shape on it (out of the shapes used; obviously hexagon, octagon, and the like are unwieldy) than to say the name of a button with a letter next to it.
    • ..... Mods... not funny... i'm dead serious. i've never been more serious about anything before in my life. and i'm an actuary.
  • I can't for the life of me understand why Sony wouldn't use the same layout they've always used. I thought one of the good things about this system is that they'd release a lot of the original PSX games on the PSP so you could play them on the run. However, if they don't put the exact same button configuration, then they're asking for trouble. I'm not saying that I like the PSX layout (four shoulders buttons? Buttons labelled with geometric shapes? What the hell?), but in this case, they really should stick
    • Personally, I would've loved two more buttons on the face as opposed to the shoulder buttons. The shoulders on the normal GBA are fine, but the shoulders on the SP are not really comfortable (at least for me) to reach.

      Not that I'm knocking the SP's design though. I wish I had one, and whenever I get around to needing one [read: FF:CC on GC], my old GBA will be gladly traded in for one. Though I agree, if only they'd made it six buttons [like the Sega Nomad], it would've been great. I doubt the next GB con

  • does it run linux?
  • From the article: "and the Universal Media Disc was confirmed to have sophisticated piracy measures, as well as a parental lock system."

    So......I give it a week before it's compromised. Any other guesses? Seriously, Sony's hardware/software is a LOT easier to mess when compared to M$. 1 week, tops.

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