Gearbox: Nintendo has listened to Wii U feedback, controller specs will “be awesome”

[famousringo]

NightDragon83 said:

How exactly does making the thumbsticks clickable make them WORSE at their job?  The 360 and PS2/3 thumbsticks are way better than the N64, GC or Wii's thumbsticks ever were in terms of comfort, durability, and responsiveness.

 

Nope.

Look, you want to move a thumbstick, you apply force to it. The more force you apply, the farther it moves in that direction. Part of that force is always downward, because you need to maintain friction between your thumb and the stick or the whole system falls apart. With no button under the thumbstick, you don't need to worry about how much downward force you apply, so long as it's enough to maintain that friction.

Add a button under there. Now that downward force has somewhere to go. Press too hard in the wrong direction, and you get a click. By necessity, the whole apparatus becomes looser with this extra dimension of motion, and therefore less responsive. The user needs to be more deliberate about how much force you apply and what direction you apply it in.

The job of the thumbstick — detailed control of two whole dimensions of motion — is way too important to clutter the thing up with a crappy and often disused button. It's doing more than enough work already. It's like hooking up the e-brake of a car to a pull on the steering wheel.

And yes, the homogenization of console gaming sucks. New inputs allow for new gameplay. The message from third parties is that they aren't interested in new gameplay experiences. While console makers are free to experiment, they'll get buried by the third parties if they neglect to include the same old controller design we've had for fifteen years now. 

It's good that you like those 360 and PS3 controllers so much. Because if 3rd parties get their way —and it seems like they are — the next fifteen years of console gaming will be just like the last fifteen years.