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Tuesday October 3, 2006 10:14 pm

Kaz: PS3 Motion Sensing + Rumble “Possible”, But Would be Expensive

PS3 Controller image

Oh Kaz, will your quotes ever cease to amaze? This week, Kaz Hirai of Sony talks to Kikizo about a combo motion-sensing / rumble remote, and while he says it’s “possible”, he says it would just make those PS3 controllers (which are currently going to cost you $39.99) too darn expensive.

“The issue is trying to isolate the vibration feature from the motion sensors,” he said. “Is it technically feasible? Absolutely. But the balancing act that you need to do, is to be able to present the controller to the consumer at an affordable price. We have one controller in the box, but many consumers will want to go out and get an extra controller. To isolate the vibration from the sensing, if that means that the controllers are going to be so expensive, then we’re doing the consumer a huge disservice.”

That’s quite the choice quote, given that Nintendo has managed to offer the package Kaz is talking about, a wireless controller with motion sensing and rumble (need we mention the speaker too?), for the very same price of $39.99. And Nintendo is notorious for not taking losses on their on hardware!

Read More | Kikizo

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Comments:

If you do some research online into how the Wii’s motion sensing actually works, I think you’ll find that’s not the case. While the sensor bar is used for “pointing” style games like Red Steel or Metroid Prime 3, where the Wiimote is used to direct a reticule on screen (something the PS3 controller doesn’t do obviously), the sensor bar is NOT used for tilt-control functionality. So when you see the videos for games like Excite Truck or other driving games on the Wii, the sensor bar is not being used at all - instead it’s controlled by the Wiimotes internal gyroscopic sensors.

Now, you could make the argument that the Wiimote doesn’t have any analog sticks (which would cut down on costs when compared to the PS3 controller), but frankly I don’t think that’s a major expenditure.

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