Staude take a look at your PS3 controller.. Now take a look at your PS2 controller.. Now take a look at your PS1 controller.. Tell me what Sony has done to further gaming?
Nothing has changed but take a look at the NES controller.. Simple two handed controller with two face buttons and a D-Pad. Now that D-Pad was a Nintendo invention that I'm sure you'll find on all 3 of your Playstation controllers, always in the exact same position. The same position that it was found on the SNES. The SNES brought in two more features.. The diamond arrangement of face buttons and of course the shoulder buttons.. Now take a look at the Playstations controller, any one it doesn't really matter.. Oh look! Shoulder buttons! 4 face buttons in a diamond shape! Nice addition there Sony..
Here we go onto the 3D era of gaming! Look at Sony's original PS1 controller.. It was a SNES controller with 2 added shoulder buttons.. Take a look at the N64's controller.. It has a 3 pronged structure for both analog play and D-Pad play, oh yeah it had an analog stick for 3D movement due to games now being '3D' it kinda makes sense.. Nintendo also brought in two more innovations.. The first one is one that stays with Nintendo, that's the Z trigger. The second is one that shows Nintendo really had put thought into this new 3D concept.. They were the C buttons. They were used in many games to control the camera, a very important part of games to this day. Along with this Nintendo decide that the immersiveness of their games could go further and thus the rumble pack was born. Sony saw the analog stick and rumble pack and thought damn the PSX needs that! People say Sony bought the 'Dual Analog' to the mainstream and to be quite honest, it wasn't ever their intention.. They didn't think about how 3D titles would need two sticks or anything deep like Nintendo did, they just needed a symmetrical design.
Now take a look at your unchanged PS2 controller for a second.. Oh no it's black now.. that's cool.. Anyway.. The GameCube controller did a few things.. Number one, it changed up the old SNES diamond design for face buttons which were arguably much more natural and confortable. It also relegated the D-Pad to the bottom and had two sticks, one at the natural thumb position and the other out of the way for quick changes in the camera. It also added in analog or pressure sensitive shoulder buttons that were very comfortable and formed nicely to your fingers. The GameCube is in many ways the black sheep of the Nintendo family but never the less, it did still stand out in various ways.
Finally let's have a look at the PS3 controller.. Now it has.. NES D-Pad, SNES diamond button arrangement, SNES shoulder buttons, oh look and nice GameCube pressure sensitive ones too! (except they don't form nicely to your fingers at all), it has the same clunky symmetric analog sticks from the PS1 days, it has rumble which is a nice addition after being taken out for being.. Last gen tech didn't Sony say? Well anyway they have that.. It also has one final addition that wasn't in the previous iterations.. It has a accelerometer! So Sony have innovated! Hmmm...
In October 2005 Nintendo debuted the Wii Remote. The Wii Remote has an accelerometer built in for motion sensing just as the PS3's controller does. What's the difference? Once again Nintendo have actually thought about it's implementation just like the analog stick and the camera buttons. The Wii Remote is a one handed device which means the motion control, unlike Sony's is FREE MOTION, Not fixed tilting. Nintendo also unveiled their's first and despite Sony saying they had plans for it for a long time, they had not shown it or even hinted at it at all previously and we haven't seen a patent pertaining to it. Nintendo have gone further still though! their control scheme is not just one handed but split. It has two handed free motion control, the Nunchuck has the analog stick and the two shoulder buttons very much akin to the N64. The Wii Remote has an expansion port just as the N64 had.. It has rumble.. It has a B trigger.. It also has an IR pointer, a speaker, in built memory and here's the kicker! It can be tilted onto it's side to resemble the NES controller.
That right there is innovation.
So as you can see, the PSwhatever controller in your hand wouldn't be there without Nintendo and instead you'd be watching movies on your multimedia hub.
For everybody else, I'm sorry about the rant, I'm not dissing the PS3, it's a great system, but to dispute Nintendo's role in pushing the industry and say Sony are the ones driving it forward over Nintendo is ridiculous
