Sony: Xbox 720 and Wii 2 will beat PS4 to market

[dunno001]

thismeintiel said:

dunno001 said:

Actually, his post is not insinuating that. You're reading that from the post, because that's what you're looking for. I'll look at things by device:

Control stick: This first showed up in the 70s, through full-sized joysticks, to weird ones like the Odyssey, to even a disk that acts fairly close to the modern PSP-nub. Nintendo made this fade into obscurity with the control pad, to bring it back later on the N64. Sony copied this resurgance from said 64, though I give neither credit for inventing it. Weird how Nintendo basically re-trivialized their own revolution...

Rumble pack: I'm afraid I'm going to have to give this one to Nintendo for the home market. Again, going to the N64 days, it came with Starfox 64, and was the first console game to give you force feedback. There were higher-end PC controllers and arcade doing it first, though, so I'm not going to say Nintendo invented it. But people liked it for Starfox, so what feature showed up in the dual-shock? Hrm, even looking at the name, it shows that Sony copied two things at once for that controller. Again, not Nintendo's inventions, but Nintendo's making them popular.

Motion controls: Lemme guess, you want to cite the Eye Toy? Wrong. Way back when, there were a few little-known accessories for the NES, things called the Power Glove and U-Force. This was the first experience with console motion. But what popularized motion? Not Eye-toy. (And no, it wasn't the Wiimote either. That only set the base for ensuring everyone had access to motion.) What popularized it was Konami's Bemani series, specifically, moving your feet to Dance Dance Revolution, and your hands to Para Para Paradise. And yes, both of these had home versions, complete with arcade controls, before the Eye-Toy came out. Unfortunately, PPP did not leave Japan, but the DDR craze was a whole different thing in the Americas. I will give Sony credit for the Eye-Toy being the first camera-type device, but their later Move is a Wiimote with glowing balls. Again, attempting to copy how Nintendo made a motion standard that was actually popular, and not relegated to 1 series of games as an add-on accessory.

I find it funny you say I shouldn't insinuate things, and yet you did.  Where did I say Sony invented any of these things?

Control Stick: Actually there were at least 2 systems that released in '82 that contained an analog stick that could be controlled using only your thumb.  Atari's 5200 and Smith Engineering's Vectrex.  However, for awhile consoles lost interest in analog controls.  In '95/'96 Sony began to invest in the tech again, feeling it would be beneficial for gaming.  They released a flight stick in April '96 that used analog joysticks.  The same month the N64 was released, however it used a digital thumbstick.  A year later Sony released the Dual Analog, a control scheme many have replicated since (even Nintendo).  BTW, the DA also featured...

Rumble Pak: internal rumble.  This was a feature taken out of the American version of the Dual Analog, but eventually made its way to America in the form of an improved DA, the Dual Shock.  Notice the date of the DA's release, April '97.  The same month the Rumble Pak launched.  Of course, no one uses rumble packs anymore, instead opting for internal rumble.  And if you want to be technical about it, Tobal 2 was the first game on consoles to give you force feedback.  It released 2 days before Star Fox.

Motion Control:  Actually there was a motion controller before the Power Glove and U-Force (which were actually made by Mattel and Broderbund, respectively), it was called Le Stick and was for the Atari 2600.  Also, DDR is not motion sensitive.  It's based on pushing buttons/pads, not the motion of your body.  However, I will give you PPP, as it sensed your hands movements.  But, I will still give Nintendo the credit for making motion control HUGE.  And I wouldn't say Sony copied Nintendo, as there is proof they were working on the Move back when the EyeToy debuted.  However, it did take the Wii's success to push them to refine it and actually put it out, as it didn't seem like they were in much of a rush to do so on their own.  I will also say they drew inspiration for the controller's layout.  Of course, there isn't much you can do with the layout a controller of that type.

The thing I don't understand about your first 2 points (and one's Nintendo fans usually bring up), is how is the N64 responsible for popularizing those things?  I mean really.  What is going to reach more people, and therefore be more influentual and popular, a system that didn't even reach 33 mil sold, or one that sold over 102 mil?  I think the answer is obvious.  And if it's not for you, who did everyone emulate the following gen, the N64 or the PS?  Looking at controllers and the media format games came out on, I'd go with PS.

I never said that you said Sony invented them. Rather, I left my entire quote tree in to show that I was referencing back to the issue arisen to Sony's copying of Nintendo's ideas. But I'll go ahead and break this down again, then:

Control stick: I did reference systems going back to the 70s using these, the 1982 instance you cite is the first case of thumb ones. But it doesn't change the point that by 1986, joysticks were being relegated to accessories, rather than the controller a system came with. Skip forward 10 more years. Yes, Sony released a flight stick the month the N64 came out. (Let's ignore all the other joystick devices that had come out as accessories for those 10 years I skipped.) This is the first time in 10 years that it could be assumed that everyone had one of these joystick-esque devices again. And this served one purpose initially: to show how much easier one would make movement in a 3D field. N64 launched with Mario 64, a game which many people feel got 3D right. And it was this stick that made it work so fluidly, even if it was digital. People saw this, and took notice. It showed Sony the value of these sticks, enough to the point where they added 2 of them. I do think, had Nintendo not revived this as a standard controller part, the Dual Analog (or Dual Shock) would not have come to be. Remember, too, that Sony's working agreement with Nintendo on the SNES CD let them see some internal things at Nintendo, including the desire to have said joystick device.

Rumble pack: *shrugs* Okay, fine, it had a 2-day release lead in Japan. Why is it, then, that the rumble feature was not ported outside of Japan until the later Dual Shock? The easy answer: Nintendo's announcement of the rumble came first. Sony has shown in recent history that when they hear something they like, they're not afraid to try to copy it. (See: Sixaxis.) As per Wikipedia, the single motor in the DA is said to be faulty, and rumored to even be able to damage the Playstation system, though admittingly, I don't see how that (the damage) could happen. Coupling this with a lack of supported games outside of Japan led to the scrapping of the feature upon moving the controller out of Japan. I fail to believe that if Sony were truely working on this independantly, they would allow such a faulty product out. That is, unless they were trying to beat Nintendo to the punch, with their rumble campaign. (I still even have the old SF64 promo video around somewhere...)

Motion: I will concede the 2600 controller; I was not aware of its existance. Having no games that support it makes it one of the biggest failures I've ever seen, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist. As for the DDR note, yes, the concept is still pushing button sensors. But if you think you're going to do that with only the movement of a standard controller on a traditional DDR pad, you're crazy. What it really was, was indirect motion controlling. It wasn't tracking your movement as you did it, rather, that you moved to hit the sensor at the right point. Sure, the home version can be played with a controller, but it sucks. With Move in development with the Eye, well... all we have is speculation on that, so I can't say either way which entered development first. All we know for certain is which was announced and released first.

Finally, you mention about emulating a controller. The winning system of a generation is always emulated, sometimes with modifications. The NES entered a market with no prior winner (crash of 83), so they needed something completely different. SNES, Genesis, and TG-16 used the NES base, and some added a few more buttons. Next gen, the original Saturn and PS1 controllers (both saw later revisions) modeled the SNES controller. (I've no idea what caused Nintendo's mutated N64 controller though.) The later modified PS1 controller was copied by the XBox, PS2, and to a lesser extent, Gamecube (via the C-stick) and Dreamcast. PS2 was copied by PS3 and 360, with Wii mixing things up. And already, before the generation ends, we see the Wii controller being emulated. I've already covered the modifications to the PS1 controller from the N64 components, so I won't repeat that.

And the disk format, well... Nintendo was stubborn, and I could see why back at the N64 launch. CDs are slow and more prone to break or be unusuable with rough people. But cartridges had a different problem: cost and ease of replication. This prohibitively high cost is what cost Nintendo most of their 3rd party support in that era- games that didn't sell to the ordered printrun cost several dollars per unsold copy, and running an extra 5-10K copies of a cart wasn't feasable, further limiting profitability. I think that even Nintendo felt a sting on a few games late in the 64's life, and joined in on the cheap disks, though with their own caveat. But it was too late to mend some broken bridges, and this leads us to some of where we are today.