Microsoft "Fixed" Xbox One Controller at Behest of Titanfall Devs

[Strazdas]

Ladies and gentleman. Welcome to generation where your control devices are locked to be playable in a single game and other games will have to adjust to that because OMG TITANFALL.

I have no love for MS or Titanfall, but I think you are getting worked up over nothing. This sounds like a sensitivity tweak and nothing more. Based on the description it actually sounds like a nice fix to an issue with the control sticks being either oversensitive or having a deadzone at the outer edges of its range of motion. I don't see what about this deserves negativity.

granted i was extragarating, but tweaking sensitivity in order to make the controller for a single game ignoring all other games that were designed to old sensitivity settings (because no such thing as manual adjustment on consoles yay) just gets everyone buy titanfall fans screwed over. Just wiat for complains of "my dead rising input lag is crap".

I've got to say, it takes a lot of balls to bet this much on what is technically a multiplatform release.

I don't think it's really going to be a huge deal for other games. It seems to mostly just be a minor tweak to the control stick sensitivity, and telling MS to fix their upscaling protocol, because apparently they screwed it up the first time.

i am guessing you are posting this from a computer and not a mobile devise, so go to mosue settings and tweak your mouse sensitivity. you will DEFINATELLY notice it. same thing applies to sensitivity of all control schemes. and since on consoles you cant tweak it to your liking, games are made to work with the existing default sensitivity. changing it for a single game gets all other games screwed over.

 

[PuckFuppet]

Boy if Titanfall flops there'll be hell to pay.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

"the legendary team behind the original Call of Duty".
Ehm, as far as I can recall the biggest PC magazine around here gave it 7+ out of 10.
Pretty sure they didn't sell too many copies either, because I remember being quite surprised when they made a sequel.

 

[Lightknight]

As a QA Engineer, I read this like, "Customer (in this case, Titanfall developers) report bug to Microsoft, Microsoft fixes bug."

Not sure why this is considered out of the ordinary in any way. Sounds like this is a general issue with the controllers anyways that would have impacted more games too.

That the controller cost $100m to develop doesn't mean shit about outstanding bugs. What's more impressive is that they spent $100m on a controller that isn't top of its class with controls as tight as possible.

 

[Raziel]

Controllers are typically profitable and the same holds true for the Xbones controller, it costs $15 USD [http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/171697-xbox-one-costs-more-to-make-than-the-ps4-thanks-to-esram-and-kinect] to manufacture and retails for $40. There will be some shipping and the retailers cut but Microsoft still make at least $10 or so on each one and maybe a little more, thats nearly as much as they make on a 3rd party game licences.

I don't know where you live, but the controllers for both ps4 and xbo are $60 in the US.

Yeah, to be fair Titanfall just strikes me as another muddy shooter, but with different shaped tanks. Couldn't be less interested if you tried. But then again as a 28 year old I'm not the demographic here, I suspect the teens are going to lap this shit up and make massive profits for EA and Microsoft

Actually I think the average age of gamers is like 35 or something. And I'm pretty sure they are looking to target everyone who buys COD every year (though what they are more likely to do it cannibalize their halo player base). I'm older than you and this would be right in my wheel house, except I don't have a xbo or gaming pc. We'll see how the 360 version turns out but its being made by a different company so I expect it to be inferior.

 

[Chaos Marine]

It's shame that Titanfall is an Origin exclusive. It'll keep a lot of people from buying it. Me chief among them for that matter.

 

[Vivi22]

As a QA Engineer, I read this like, "Customer (in this case, Titanfall developers) report bug to Microsoft, Microsoft fixes bug."

Not sure why this is considered out of the ordinary in any way. Sounds like this is a general issue with the controllers anyways that would have impacted more games too.

That the controller cost $100m to develop doesn't mean shit about outstanding bugs. What's more impressive is that they spent $100m on a controller that isn't top of its class with controls as tight as possible.

Agreed on the controller fixing.

I'm honestly at a loss as to how they could spend $100m developing it though. As far as I know, it isn't that much different from the 360 controller aside from form factor is it? I could see spending some money looking at alternative possibilities, but $100m? Really? This sort of shit is why consoles have a hard time recouping their investment.

 

[Lightknight]

As a QA Engineer, I read this like, "Customer (in this case, Titanfall developers) report bug to Microsoft, Microsoft fixes bug."

Not sure why this is considered out of the ordinary in any way. Sounds like this is a general issue with the controllers anyways that would have impacted more games too.

That the controller cost $100m to develop doesn't mean shit about outstanding bugs. What's more impressive is that they spent $100m on a controller that isn't top of its class with controls as tight as possible.

Agreed on the controller fixing.

I'm honestly at a loss as to how they could spend $100m developing it though. As far as I know, it isn't that much different from the 360 controller aside from form factor is it? I could see spending some money looking at alternative possibilities, but $100m? Really? This sort of shit is why consoles have a hard time recouping their investment.

That is really troubling. Someone is letting the budgets get away from them and that's going to seriously harm the bottom line. Maybe there's something that prevents 3rd party peripherals or something that required tremendous security but still, $100 million is a hell of a lot for just an input device. Maybe in a few years Microsoft will announce that they controllers actually transform on command to take control of the human host so that you can still play games while sleeping? For $100 million, any controller that is produced should also be capable of hugging me and telling me that everything is going to be ok.

I can say for sure that the battery pack absolutely sucked for 360 controllers. I mean, to the point that I actually went to the store and bought AAs. The last time I did that was in the 90's. Since then it's just been C's or D's for large lantern flashlights and whatnot.

Maybe if they consider the XBO controller to be an evolution of the 360 controller which is an evolution of the Xbox controller. In which case all of them combined? Maybe.

 

[J Tyran]

Controllers are typically profitable and the same holds true for the Xbones controller, it costs $15 USD [http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/171697-xbox-one-costs-more-to-make-than-the-ps4-thanks-to-esram-and-kinect] to manufacture and retails for $40. There will be some shipping and the retailers cut but Microsoft still make at least $10 or so on each one and maybe a little more, thats nearly as much as they make on a 3rd party game licences.

I don't know where you live, but the controllers for both ps4 and xbo are $60 in the US.

I live in the UK but the manfactuing cost was in USD so I grabbed the price from Amazon, if you are paying more than $60 you are being done. On Amazon [http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_7?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=xbox%20one%20controller&sprefix=Xbox+on%2Caps%2C134] they are being sold at less than $40 before tax and shipping and $50 after.

 

[thiosk]

The pc master race is stuck with origen for titanfall, so this thiosk will give it a pass. (probably would have passed on it anyway, shooters are boring!)

 

[loa]

Microsoft adjusts the sensitivity of their coltrollers analogue sticks upon receiving a suggestion from a dev = microsoft "bends over backwards" for that dev?
Really now?

 

[Atmos Duality]

So, Microsoft makes a minor internal update to the Xbone OS and devkit, and this becomes newsworthy, HOW?
More mind boggling; some folks are freaking out over it. Collaboration between obvious business partners?!
SCANDALOUS.

 

[Lightknight]

As a QA Engineer, I read this like, "Customer (in this case, Titanfall developers) report bug to Microsoft, Microsoft fixes bug."

Not sure why this is considered out of the ordinary in any way. Sounds like this is a general issue with the controllers anyways that would have impacted more games too.

That the controller cost $100m to develop doesn't mean shit about outstanding bugs. What's more impressive is that they spent $100m on a controller that isn't top of its class with controls as tight as possible.

But there was no bug, do you know how to read? No, no you don't.

When dealing with input, something not being responsive enough would be entered as a bug. A bug is just any part of the product not behaving as designed. This is why they said that it was "fixing a problem with the controller input". The phrase "fixing a problem" is indicative of it being a bug.

If you actually read the articles linked, they fixed "the sensitivity of the outer boundaries of the thumbsticks on the Xbox One controller". The bug was that it was not responsive enough, the fix is that they made it more responsive.

Perhaps you think bugs mean something that they don't? Not sure.

 

[Lightknight]

Microsoft adjusts the sensitivity of their coltrollers analogue sticks upon receiving a suggestion from a dev = microsoft "bends over backwards" for that dev?
Really now?

Yeah, exactly. It is entirely software based so you're just talking about tweaking values on an already established code. So a 7 gets translated into an 11 or whatever their values they use for how quickly it responds to that range of pressure on the sticks.

So, Microsoft makes a minor internal update to the Xbone OS and devkit, and this becomes newsworthy, HOW?
More mind boggling; some folks are freaking out over it. Collaboration between obvious business partners?!
SCANDALOUS.

Hah, well put.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Can we stop calling it exclusive, it is coming to 3 platforms...
Also - it will most likely fail now, too much is at stake.

Also... Converter that turn 720p to 1080p? So we going to use the old scale method of pixel duping? I am betting on it looking horrible.

 

[ToastyMozart]

I've got to say, it takes a lot of balls to bet this much on what is technically a multiplatform release.

I don't think it's really going to be a huge deal for other games. It seems to mostly just be a minor tweak to the control stick sensitivity, and telling MS to fix their upscaling protocol, because apparently they screwed it up the first time.

i am guessing you are posting this from a computer and not a mobile devise, so go to mosue settings and tweak your mouse sensitivity. you will DEFINATELLY notice it. same thing applies to sensitivity of all control schemes. and since on consoles you cant tweak it to your liking, games are made to work with the existing default sensitivity. changing it for a single game gets all other games screwed over.

Oh, believe me, I know all too well how obnoxious a poorly adjusted mouse sensitivity setting is (especially with older games used to low-DPI mice). This seems to just be a tweak to how the controller reports at the edges of their tilt radius though. If they were adjusting the overall sensitivity, they could easily just do that in the game settings, it seems more about getting a higher degree of accuracy when the sticks are tilted all the way, which might throw people a little off their game on other titles, but it shouldn't take too long to readjust.

that being said, I bought MW2 for the pc and there's no way in hell I'm buying a pc game from those guys again. It was just a giant step back in pc gaming compared to its predecessor on the pc.

Yeah, Infinity Ward can go fuck themselves over their treatment of the PC platform. Between the artificially inflated system requirements, lack of FOV options (locked at 65 on a PC game?!) being unable to get a stable framerate on a Titan at max (despite being less visually intensive than something like CS:GO), and an absurd 50GB install size implemented as a weak attempt to deter pirates, they really have lost any respect I had for them.
At least Treyarch still makes decent PC versions of their games, so there's that.

 

[ToastyMozart]

Can we stop calling it exclusive, it is coming to 3 platforms...
Also - it will most likely fail now, too much is at stake.

Also... Converter that turn 720p to 1080p? So we going to use the old scale method of pixel duping? I am betting on it looking horrible.

I hope they at least try some blending with it. It'll look a bit blurry, but at least it won't look like the pixels on your screen are trying to jump out and kill you.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Can we stop calling it exclusive, it is coming to 3 platforms...
Also - it will most likely fail now, too much is at stake.

Also... Converter that turn 720p to 1080p? So we going to use the old scale method of pixel duping? I am betting on it looking horrible.

I hope they at least try some blending with it. It'll look a bit blurry, but at least it won't look like the pixels on your screen are trying to jump out and kill you.

You sir made my morning. I laughed at job so hard that it turned bit awkward. But yeah...
If they don't add some kind of AA or PP to calculate angles for pixel fading and blending - it will look rough as fuck. Most likely now it will just look awful.

I don't get it why consoles are making it harder for themselves. 2k resolution will be standard in few years and if they plan to keep this generation around half as long they did the last. Then they are going to run in to a lot of problems. What they going to do then? Upscale 720p to 2k? In 15fps.

I am sure making a console takes long and is not cheap, but you could at least plan for the fucking future a bit more than this.

 

[ToastyMozart]

Can we stop calling it exclusive, it is coming to 3 platforms...
Also - it will most likely fail now, too much is at stake.

Also... Converter that turn 720p to 1080p? So we going to use the old scale method of pixel duping? I am betting on it looking horrible.

I hope they at least try some blending with it. It'll look a bit blurry, but at least it won't look like the pixels on your screen are trying to jump out and kill you.

You sir made my morning. I laughed at job so hard that it turned bit awkward. But yeah...
If they don't add some kind of AA or PP to calculate angles for pixel fading and blending - it will look rough as fuck. Most likely now it will just look awful.

I don't get it why consoles are making it harder for themselves. 2k resolution will be standard in few years and if they plan to keep this generation around half as long they did the last. Then they are going to run in to a lot of problems. What they going to do then? Upscale 720p to 2k? In 15fps.

I am sure making a console takes long and is not cheap, but you could at least plan for the fucking future a bit more than this.

I'm hoping they at least have some method of applying FXAA post-upscale, if that's possible with they way they set it up.

As for the 3840 x 2160, I'm expecting it to become decently common within the next 5 years (with proliferation about that of 1820x1080 in 2007-8). However, we're still at the point where you can't feasibly game at that resolution without either considering medium settings (circa 2013) at 30FPS acceptable, or sinking about $1100 into graphics hardware (probably around $400 in 2018, which is still nothing to sneeze at).

 

[Crazie_Guy]

I'm confused by all this. Analog deadzones and sensitivity are things any dev with any game could just adjust in the software, assuming you actually have full access to the input data from the controller. One way or another you should never have to get the big guys to fix a controller problem unless it's a hardware problem, which this obviously isn't. Unless Microsoft has some incredibly stupid setup like a single controller input reading program that devs are locked out of, this shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.