Rumor: Could This Possibly be the PlayStation 4 Controller?

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

Please stop. Just stop with the touch screen controls. They've only ever been good for RTS's and inventory management. Both of which are better handled by an in-game interface. Same thing with motion controls. Wait 20 years and try again when giant hologram arcades are a thing.

Edit: To drive the point home. How many people bought a PS Move or a Udraw tablet again?

 

[Orange12345]

PLEASE PLEASE SONY don't put a freaking touch screen on the controller, remember what happened when you put sixaxis on the ps3 controller? it didn't work so no one used it

The sixaxis worked perfectly fine.

not in any useful capacity yea you could shake the thing or turn it but using it in a game was pointless bullshit

How are those features the same? At all...in any way?

There the same in the sense that Sony is just copying Nintendo again, which don't get me wrong Nintendo can do what they want and I liked the Wii for what it was, BUT adding in a washed down version of a feature (like the sixaxis) because your competition did it is stupid and pointless

 

[Shoggoth2588]

PLEASE PLEASE SONY don't put a freaking touch screen on the controller, remember what happened when you put sixaxis on the ps3 controller? it didn't work so no one used it

Dual-touch screens are the main reason I'm probably going to miss out on owning a PS-Vita.

---

I like how it seems to have a hard wire. I like wireless controllers but do miss the days of corded controllers. A 20-hour battery is fine but not even a 100 hour charge can compete with a controller plugged into the system. I'm guessing it won't stay like that though. I wish I could see the L2 and R2 buttons though...I really hope they've been made into triggers instead of those horrible marshmallows.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Remember when technology was focused on making things smaller and, more importantly, lighter? I miss those days...

I don't like superlight controllers. My friend has a PS3 controller without Dualshock, it feels far too light, it's just off. It makes me feel like I'll snap it half if I get a little overexcited, like a crappy third-party job.

Except the non-dualshock controllers are essentially exactly the same, except without weights in it. It's just as sturdy. Actually even more durable due to the lack of moving parts. It's also less likely to be damaged when you drop it.

It doesn't really make that much difference if non-dualshock ones are sturdier (I'm not one of those people that chucks their controllers across the room when they lose), they felt weak and fragile in my hands. It's an annoying little distraction, like an uncomfortable seat or someone eating crisps loudly next to me.

 

[Denamic]

Remember when technology was focused on making things smaller and, more importantly, lighter? I miss those days...

I don't like superlight controllers. My friend has a PS3 controller without Dualshock, it feels far too light, it's just off. It makes me feel like I'll snap it half if I get a little overexcited, like a crappy third-party job.

Except the non-dualshock controllers are essentially exactly the same, except without weights in it. It's just as sturdy. Actually even more durable due to the lack of moving parts. It's also less likely to be damaged when you drop it.

It doesn't really make that much difference if non-dualshock ones are sturdier (I'm not one of those people that chucks their controllers across the room when they lose), they felt weak and fragile in my hands. It's an annoying little distraction, like an uncomfortable seat or someone eating crisps loudly next to me.

It's the opposite for me. The lightness makes it easier to completely forget about the controller.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Remember when technology was focused on making things smaller and, more importantly, lighter? I miss those days...

I remember those times too. We ended up with phones whose buttons needed to be pressed with fingers to get the appropriate key, and screens so small even young people had to squint.

Looks okay, but I don't know about the d-pad. Looks kinda crammed.

 

[Treblaine]

The touchpad worries me as it smacks of gimmicky design that is neither evolution nor revolution.

They need to see how gamepads are ACTUALLY used and EXPAND on that. Basic summary of aspects:

square thumbstick housing
Without putting much thought into this, it seems like the housing should be round, I mean why not? It's for looking in any direction equally.

Except that's not how an analogue stick either works or is used. They have an X and Y axis, Y for up and down, X for left and right. And in a round housing it is IMPOSSIBLE to max out both X and Y axis. Imagine the stick is right at the top, the 12 o'clock position on the housing. The x value is zero, because it's moved neither to left to right. But as you move the stick to the right the round housing forces the stick down. Only if it had square corners could you get maximum X and Y values.

This is important for things like where pitch and roll are mounted to the same thumbstick, you can't have maximum pitch and roll at the same time.

The inconsistency you get with round thumbstick housings result in most games that have thumbsticks just using one axis at a time. For example, steering for most vehicle controls is only using the x-axis for steering, y-axis does nothing, and another button is used for acceleration and brake. With a square housing you can easily free up two buttons but more important free up two fingers, by having x-axis for accelerate then brake and reverse.

decline of face buttons as primary buttons
It's quite clear now that the most important buttons are not the face-buttons but the shoulder buttons, the supposedly auxiliary buttons. The importance of the right thumbstick for controlling the game is huge, it's not just controlling the camera, you can't look left and right then you cannot turn and navigate the environment. You can't make the adjustments in a charging attack.

Any use of the face buttons now must be extremely limited.

It made sense many years ago to have something like the jump function on the face buttons, back when the right thumbstick didn't do much. Now it's clear a lot of conventional functions should go to the shoulder buttons. When you do a running jump, fine adjustments in direction are often needed, best to keep right thumb on thumbstick and have jump-button mounted somewhere as a bumper-button.


D-pad as buttons

Many developers have utilised the d-pad not as an alternative to the thumbstick but as extra selection buttons, utilising how it can smartly handle 8 different directions and on xbox 360 controller either thumb can reach the d-pad, allowing much more flexibility.

This deserves to be expanded upon as if has far more significance for most gaming needs to have a d-pad suited as an inventory selection method as a throwback for movement in 2D titles. And the thumbstick emulated for d-pad almost always works very well.

analogue depth trigger's significance

Has very little. Few games effectively utilise the trigger depth and those that do so often get it wrong, only using it for a binary input, like

Consider this, a simple two stage trigger, where the stages are very easy to feel. The problem with analogue triggers is unlike for example the accelerator pedal of a car there isn't anywhere near as much control. With a car's gas pedal you have many muscles in the leg

And the way most drive in games they hardly show much discretion, they always floor it for maximum revs and when they ever need to slow down they slam on the brakes. Which works remarkably well if you have no worry of utterly shredding your car's tires and just want to get from A to B ASAP.

What would be worth considering is the 2-stage button seen on Gamecube. You could feel it, pressing it down it would be soft then you'd meet some resistance as if there was another button under the button. This could be really damn handy, as unlike a regular analogue trigger where you have a spring where slight variations in muscle strength will move a thumb

Though I think the most useful innovation for the shoulder triggers would be a fixed structure or something that allows each finger to have more leverage control, like how the gas-pedal on a car you can plant your heel of the footwell and also there is usually a step beside the gas-pedal to put half your foot on.

________________


None of this is revolutionary, it's all evolutionary and adapting to how developers make games and how users play them.

Fancy stuff like touch-pads in the middle need to be balanced with a holistic ergonomic plan, rather than just shovelling in ideas and expecting everyone else to actually figure out any way to make it worth while.

 

[Treblaine]

What makes me doubt the officialness of this design?

It's clearly a fixed wired controller. It's not attached by mini USB, that's a clear dura-cord and I don't see them going anything other than wireless with the only wired option being connect via USB.

This clearly points to prototype design implementation.

Maybe there is a reprieve for low-position D-pad.

I also don't see a start or select button seems odd to omit those start at the very least.

Ahh, but you do see a "PS Button".

Now usually when you press the PS-button the OS overlay appears but the game automatically pauses yet when you press the PS button again the overlay goes away yet the game is still paused. SO you can enter the pause screen simply by pressing PS button to bring OS-overlay up, then back down again.

But select button would be most missed. That's normally for a far more distinct function like bring up a map screen, or score screen or something.

I hope this is just them spitballing and they bin this idea, anything that sacrifices buttons, even Start and Select buttons, for a touchpad two steps back step back for one step forward. But it's precisely the kind of thing big monolithic top-down controlled companies can and will do, they aren't interested in a genuinely better product, they are interested in marketing points. It has this, it has that, a big corp like that doesn't care about all the little features that flashy marketing will struggle to explain the benefits of but you'll easily experience for yourself.

 

[Treblaine]

Remember when technology was focused on making things smaller and, more importantly, lighter? I miss those days...

I don't like superlight controllers. My friend has a PS3 controller without Dualshock, it feels far too light, it's just off. It makes me feel like I'll snap it half if I get a little overexcited, like a crappy third-party job.

Except the non-dualshock controllers are essentially exactly the same, except without weights in it. It's just as sturdy. Actually even more durable due to the lack of moving parts. It's also less likely to be damaged when you drop it.

It doesn't really make that much difference if non-dualshock ones are sturdier (I'm not one of those people that chucks their controllers across the room when they lose), they felt weak and fragile in my hands. It's an annoying little distraction, like an uncomfortable seat or someone eating crisps loudly next to me.

Still that's mainly a matter of relativism. It's only light compared to what you are used to, it doesn't inherently rustle your jimmies, it just defies you expectations of how heavy a controller should be. The annoying thing is the weight saving of no vibration-cores should have been taken up by batteries. That's the only reason it was lighter, the sudden need to not include rumble controls.

BTW, I really don't care AT ALL about rumble as it currently is.

If rumble control cannot be made more sophistcated it should be left out but most importantly, if the developers aren't willing to use it in any useful way.

See if you're riding a horse over the high-planes of New Mexico, a piece of plastic incoherently rumbling out of sync with the horse's gallops is not going to add to any sensation. It's a token gesture. Same with in games where you see an auto-cannon that looks like it kicks with all the force of Zeus' thunderbolts, yet the supposed complimentary sensation is a fizzle in the palm of your hands. I can see how when this first appeared people may have gone "wow" at the gimmick but it doesn't stand the test of time.

Few developers even bother with it and its a standard feature to be able to turn vibration off in almost every game. Interestingly you don't get the option to turn off stereo sound, now THAT is an immersive feature when combined with a decent set of headphones or a surround sound system.

The potential future of vibration in console controllers

It needs to recognise it's limitations, it is not a "shock", it is a little rumble. It's far more effective to have rumble as a discrete yet distinct twitch. As is you can count the number of games on one hand that use the rumble for a GAMEPLAY purpose rather than simply a redundant feedback that "hurr, your gun has recoil" when what you see and hear from the game does a far better job of illustrating that.

Things like indicating the subtle functioning of a firearm. The real life Stringer Missile launcher used a rumble in the hand grip to tell the firer when they had a good heat lock to fire the missile, you can literally translate that use. There are so many GAMEPLAY uses:
-For car's nitrous boost, a rumble to indicate the nitrous is stressing the engine too much and causing destructive vibrations
-Enemy proximity sensor that you can perceive even over the cacophonous noises of gunfire and explosions
-For a superheroes "Spidey sense", a subtle rumble when danger approaches.
-Indication a weapon is nearly empty and could do with a tactical reload, without needing to shift focus away from your target to eyeball ammo counter

It's telling that of all the parallel developments on PC and ports to PC, there has been no longing for rumble controls. And this is even amongst PC users who will buy any number of ancillary extras, no one cares about haptic feedback and it's mainly down to how the developers have used it in such gimmicky ways.

 

[rob_simple]

Is it just me, or does that look like one of those shitty '20-games-in-1' things they sell in markets to trick stupid people into thinking it's a Playstation controller?

OT: If it's legit, though, it looks pretty cool. I like the chunkier design because I prefer controllers that don't feel like they'll fly out of my hands whenever I sneeze.

 

[Meatspinner]

ERMAHGUD! They ripped of the Dreamcast!! How could they!

 

[gphjr14]

Probably a prototype (remember the banana shaped controller for PS3?)
Also I recall somewhere that the PS4 controller would have some kind of interface on it.

 

[Matthewmagic]

It looks like the shitty wildcatz controller for the PS4

 

[Woodsey]

Remember when technology was focused on making things smaller and, more importantly, lighter? I miss those days...

Well that'd certainly explain why the PS3 controller was seemingly designed for a particularly weak midget. I have pretty stubby fingers and even I wonder whether it's still not a little small.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Please someone tell me that there HONESTLY isn't going to be a touch screen on that thing. Or, at least, that thing that people seem to think is the touch screen.

The PS controllers aren't exactly designed with those things in mind, and the fact that it honestly looks like it has a screen size comparable to an iPod Nano isn't helping much.

 

[Genocidicles]

God I hope that's not a touchscreen.

Sony was my last hope for a non gimmicky console, what with the Wii U's stupid controller and rumours of the nextbox coming with a pre-packaged Kinect.