Fair enough Torillian, they probably reused their flightstick technology and thumbstick-sized it. But they looked at Nintendo, saw what they did, liked the idea, took their flightstick tech, and compacted it to the dualshock and socketed it into the controller, like Nintendo did. The idea was birthed by Vectrex, rebirthed by Nintendo some 15 years later, and 2 years later, Nintendo's idea to bring it back to the world of gaming was used by Sony. From a business point of view, there is leader-following (I won't use the term copying as it involves too many ambiguities).

For that I would be hard pressed to find anyone to disagree. But if so, let's continue! :D

Yep, and going all the way back to the topic of this thread (I know it's been a while) that is the same kind of leader-following as Nintendo is doing right now trying to regocus their efforts on online because the other two publishers (most credit going to MS here) have shown how popular and successful it can be.  And that is what started this whole mess.

Okay, I'll agree this is motion gaming (as I said I've done one of these in College). But it didn't come before the N64. These games required flash (as most Webcam applications do), here is the history of it and here is the snipped:

Webcame usage over the browser would be in fetal stage in 1996 on use over Netscape as a plug-in. Odds are it began actually used by a fair amount of users, and then for games, a few years later. The N64 was released in 1996. Close one though.

Kudos for the video, it was informative. But Tor, lol at attempt at using the thumb in 4:29. As of there he uses thumb and index as I mentioned many posts ago. I understand he uses only his thumb at 8:00, but alot of the time he wasn't holding it from the top and the position didn't seem comfortable at all. But I'll concede even this.

Even then... All the other arguments brought up, the fact that Nintendo did not use potentionmeters they actually had a digital joystick (so it's not even an analogue stick), this proves they didn't base their design off the vectrex or any other analog stick out there. And then, as I demonstrated to o_O.Q, they didn't succeed in bringing it to the masses like Nintendo did, 1.5 to 2 years before the Playstation. This argument holds much stronger for the american public, but roughly 2 Million japanese users (total japan Mario sales) is also considerable as a threshold.

So, in summary,

1) The Vectrex was preceded by the Atari 5200 joystick.

2) The first thumbstick, as far as we know, was the Vectrex, but it was a poor one, and very incomplete as a thumbstick. In contrast, the N64 digital thumbstick was fully functional, ergonomic, and designed for use with a back trigger button. The design was solid. The dualshock did not drastically improve the N64 design, it simply refined it.

3) The N64 controller was not an analog stick, it was digital. Hence, its design is not based of the Atari 5200 technology (and Vectrex for that matter). Same cannot be said about the PS1 design.

4) The game Mario 64 gloriously demonstrated to the public how this HW technology was to be properly used, within video game software.

5) Last but not least, the N64 was the first console to bring this technology to the masses, in a mediatically explosive way. In terms of cultural phenomenon, we can accredit Nintendo for its marketing and software interactivity efforts: it made noise. Hence why, in my view, it is the one to win the credit on this point.

If any of these points are still up for debate (point 4, maybe. Flight simulators had their place with this too I think), let's get to the bottom of this ;)

what does the n64 have to do with this at all?

"As for motion controls, in what case was motion controls introduced to gaming, but at the same time not bring it to the masses?"

weren't you asking me about motion gaming brought to the masses?

Nice revision of vectrex history!!!

The vectrex is not and never was a thumbstick the idea of a thumbstick didnt even exist back then, maybe the vectrex joystick gave birth to the idea of a thumbstick.

The vectrex is my first and favorite console and i´ve played the hell out of it.

99% of the games use the 1 and 2 as main buttons and if you tried to use that joystick as a thumbstick you couldnt reach 1&2.

1. Nintendo made the transition from joysticks to joypads for consoles with the nes all big consoles before had joysticks.

2 Nintendo made the first thumbstick for joypads and the first digitial too.

Edit: the closest thing to thumbstick back then was the tac-2 joystick

Edit 2: Nintendo even had sn plastick add on for the nes which made the d pad a thumbstick.