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PlayStation (Games) Businesses First Person Shooters (Games) Nintendo Quake Sony Wii

Sony, Nintendo, id Lauded With Emmys 55

Posted by Zonk from the games-plus-hollywood-equals-press dept.
Nintendo, Sony, and id Software have all been given Emmy awards for technology-related contributions to gaming and entertainment. Nintendo's Wiimote, obviously, garnered an Emmy for Peripheral Development and Technoogical Impact of Video Game Controllers, while id collectively received two awards. John Carmack was given The Pioneering Development Work in 3D Game Engines award, and id as a whole received an accolade for Quake's rendering technology. As reader NexusTw1n points out, though, there was something odd about Sony's award. "On Monday, Sony claimed their revolutionary SIXAXIS controller had been honoured with an Emmy , leaving many wondering why the Wiimote had been ignored. Yesterday, that press release was clarified, with a statement making it clear the award was actually for the PS2 Dual Shock controller, rather than the new PS3 model."
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Sony, Nintendo, id Lauded With Emmys More

Sony, Nintendo, id Lauded With Emmys

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  • Stop Digging (Score:5, Funny)

    by tfinniga ( 555989 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @04:05PM (#17544966)
    Sony's PR lately has been the worst PR I've ever seen.

    Although some might say that's because I haven't been watching Sony's PR long enough.
    • First, I actually picked up the PS3 yesterday, so I'd like to admit that I have three to four hours of use. To stay on topic, I will speak on the remote first and my very first impression was "where's the beef". It felt and looked like a scaled down (less) version of the ps2 dual shock controller. Also, connecting the wireless controller for it to charge for 2 to 3 hours wasn't to welcoming either. Now to go a little off topic, I am really worried about Sony and my #$@ $600 investment as I didn't even b

  • Sony Award (Score:5, Funny)

    by TwistedSpring ( 594284 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @04:09PM (#17545020) Homepage
    "Sony, we will be honouring your legendary controller technology with an Emmy." "AWESOME we cannot believe we won over Nintendo with our hasty stab at copying their functionality. Release lots of embarrassing press releases patting ourselves on the back and saying how fantastic we are for our revolutionary SIXAXIS controller!!" "Haha, only kidding. It's for the DualShock, suckers" How much of a smack in the face is that? Quality work Emmy dudes.

  • Quake, as in the original Quake? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @04:13PM (#17545090) Homepage
    While it would be rather late to give an award, I do think Quake would be the most deserving of an award for graphics achievment certainly since and maybe before. Fully 3D environments with arbitrary geometry -- fairly complex geometry at that -- on hardware that had no business being able to render such a thing was quite an achievement. Throw on the lightmaps and you've got something even more impressive. Nothing looked like Quake at the time, and everything since is more detailed geometry, higher detailed textures, and better lighting/texture shader effects. Yay Quake! Of course the game itself wasn't that great, setting the precedent for all future iD games. :)

    I particularly liked how they got good performance out of the game by requiring hours and hours of pre-processing on the maps to create visibility trees. There were even servers you could submit your maps to that would then run vis on them so hobbyists could save some time.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Cheesey ( 70139 )
      Quake certainly was technically impressive, but I couldn't help being disappointed by it at the time. It just wasn't as good as Doom. Technically, of course, it was better, but it wasn't as much fun. In particular, single player completely sucked, and the level artwork was a miserable collection of dull greys. I don't think I ever finished every level - I just lost interest in it.

      None of this was Carmack's fault, of course. He can only be blamed for Quake C :).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jackbird ( 721605 )
        16 Player deathmatch over TCP/IP, with players able to join and leave at any time, vs. 4 player deathmatch over LAN (or incredibly painful middleware like KALI) everyone has to join at the same time. Add in threewave CTF, Quakeworld, and Team Fortress for giggles, too (threewave didnt' even require the clients to download a mod).

        Quake wasn't just about the graphics, it was about the multiplayer gameplay. I agree that the single-player version felt like a tech demo, but then again, so has every id game sin

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by lmnfrs ( 829146 )
          Only the original Threewave versions did not require downloading. The grappling hook and actual flags (instead of keys) were added and new maps were created, but all the models were relatively small. Quakeworld enabled the automatic downloading of missing files when connecting to a server requiring files the client didn't have, so the process was still very simple and easy.
          It's also worth noting that a major aspect of Quake's achievement is how it shaped gaming. Not only did Quake spawn freeware mods wit
      • Quake certainly was technically impressive, but I couldn't help being disappointed by it at the time. It just wasn't as good as Doom.

        Yeah, Doom was the last iD game that was both an amazing engine and an amazing game. Since then, the "fun" has come from either licencees of the engine or modders. Speaking of...

        None of this was Carmack's fault, of course. He can only be blamed for Quake C :).

        Granted I was talking about graphical achievment since that seems to be what the award is for, but no paen to Quake i
        • I would also like to second the praise and blame towards QuakeC.
          I think the original Quake was the most modded game ever. I personally made three mods for it, which was 3 more than I made for anything else. Part of that was the absolute ease with which you could create mods. All of the dev tools came with the source code. QuakeC is a toy language, designed only for Quake. That is the strength and weakness.

          Need an easy way to do transformations, dot products and cross products? Want to do collision
  • joystiq is saying the Wiimote didn't win either, but that the D-pad was the lauded innovation? What about the thumb-stick?

    http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/09/oops-sony-declar es-sixaxis-emmy-emmys-say-uh-uh/ [joystiq.com]

    Scientific progress goes *boink!*
    • I was going to post that "correction", if it is indeed factual. I can't seem to find any decent coverage. And apparently the thumb-stick isn't relevant until you put two on the same controller. But enough guessing, where is the REAL information about why Nintendo and Sony are being recognized. All I can find are official summaries, and bloggers with active imaginations. Who's got the straight poop?

    • joystiq is saying the Wiimote didn't win either, but that the D-pad was the lauded innovation? What about the thumb-stick?

      We'll see how the Wiimote really turns out, but the D-pad changed the world. Thumbsticks STILL piss me and many other people off as they really are VERY difficult to get precise movement out of (especially as your hands get larger and the controller becomes less ergonomic) as compared to an actual joystick.

      On the other hand, Nintendo made the first and second D-pads, and they're b

      • Really? I'm going to say I was a lot happier with the SNES controller in general. It's a slight refinement of the basic NES d-pad, but the face buttons and ergonomics are vastly improved. The original NES controller qualifies as one of the LEAST ergonomic controllers ever created. I'd say up there with the Jaguar's abomination.
        • I like everything about the SNES controller better except the D-Pad. I still believe the NES D-Pad is the finest ever conceived. I know that even having an opinion on this subject reveals me as one of the biggest nerds the world has ever known but hell, what can you do :D In fact the only thing wrong with the SNES controller (IMO) is that it could be thicker to accomodate people with larger hands. But I can live with it.

  • How has their ego bubble not burst yet? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zeek40 ( 1017978 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @04:23PM (#17545290)
    FTFA:
    "The overwhelming consumer demand and critical acclaim for PS3 is testament of the platform's strength and the industry's desire for a true next-generation entertainment system,"
    Is that why there are PS3's gathering dust at almost every shop within 50 miles of my house and i still cant get my hands on a damn Wii?

  • So what _are_ the six axes? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Draconix ( 653959 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @04:42PM (#17545606)
    My best guess...

    1)x
    2)y
    3)z
    4)t (time)
    5)? (???)
    6)p (profit)
    • Not sure if this is a troll, but it's: X, Y, Z, Pitch, Roll, Yaw.

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by everphilski ( 877346 )
        While pitch, roll, and yaw are not axes but rather rotations about axes, a set of arbitrary axes can be set up to define these, not coincident with the X, Y, Z axes. These two sets of axes can be related by a 9x9 matrix. This is useful in engineering, relating frames (for example, between an aircraft and the ground, or the aircraft and a turboprop's rotor)
        • It is worth nothing, though, that even outside of engineering, it's not at all without precent to refer to such a controller as a six-axis system. For example, the NASA SimLabs VMS [nasa.gov] package is described as "the only large six-axis motion system in the world". And that was just my first quick Googling attempt.

          Point being, you can accuse Sony of a lot of things, but their controller is accurately named (even if it is a cheap knock-off of the Wiimote).
    • Presumably the six degrees of freedom required for arbitrary position and orientation in space. You use three numbers to specify your position in space along the x, y, and z coordinate axes. Then you use three numbers to specify how much you have rotated around each of the axes. You can think of all six of these numbers as positions on six axes in six dimensional space. Why would you want to do that? So that you can have a cool palindromic [wikipedia.org] name for your controller like SIXAXIS.
  • Is nintendo the winner for the Wiimote, or is Sony the winner for the mini-wiimote?

  • Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pojut ( 1027544 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @04:55PM (#17545828) Homepage
    I've always been rather partial of the SNES controller. More specifically, the SN PRO PAD (the original was a little too small for my hands) Still, the layout, the feel, everything...it was a FANTASTIC controller, and perfect for fighting games. Also, the old NES arcade stick (it's name eludes me at the moment) was quite cool, with the big ol' red buttons and the knob that unscrewed
    • It was called the NES Advantage and it was for cheaters. God, I loved that thing and its delicate little turbo button.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pojut ( 1027544 )
        a rather common joke in our house was to loosen the ball all the way to the top, so the next person that grabbed it would have the ball go flying off with some hairlip sibling chasing after it. Or, if we were feeling particularly mean, we would take the ball off and just leave a cold, threaded stick.

        ahhhh, those were the days...
      • It was called the NES Advantage and it was for cheaters. God, I loved that thing and its delicate little turbo button.

        Yeah, it was very much for cheating. It even had knobs that allowed you to change the fire rate of the turbo, so games that had optimal patterns (like Track and Field) could be tuned for maximum cheating.
    • I thought the ASCIIpad for SNES was excellent: I could independently set (normal, turbo, auto) on (A, B, X, Y, L, R). All the playstation and later controllers I saw had turbo for each button linked.
  • Its as if they make stuff up now. how many ways can Sony lie? I will not buy Sony products and after this latest little lie, it just helps justify my position.
  • What does Technoogical Impact of Video Game Controllers mean?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Chris Burke ( 6130 )
      What does Technoogical Impact of Video Game Controllers mean?

      It means what happens when your Wii remote hits your 40" plasma screen. :)

  • No mention of Microsoft's Emmy? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MSFanBoi2 ( 930319 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @06:49PM (#17547950)
    Yep, they got one too, but I guess since it's Slashdot, people failed to mention it.

    Microsoft won an Emmy for Xbox Live.
  • I wrote the original investigation article that followed up with Emmy reps to find out the real story, after seeing the Sony press release claiming SIXAXIS had won.

    You can see it here, which carries the quotes from NATAS which led to Sony withdrawing the original release:

    http://www.hydrapinion.com/index.php/create/2007/0 1/09/ [hydrapinion.com]

    Just wanted to clarify that Nintendo won for the D-pad, Zonk, not the Wiimote, just as Sony won for DUALSHOCK and not SIXAXIS. Of course, Nintendo never claimed otherwise... nor did th

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