Distant Rumbling

Distant Rumbling

It would be harsh, perhaps, to suggest that this week's announcement of a replacement for the PS3's much-vaunted SIXAXIS pad represented an embarrassing volte-face for Sony. Harsh, but nevertheless true. The introduction of the Dual Shock 3 and the reversal of a year of public denouncements of rumble technology as "last generation" is a loss of face for the firm. It's also unquestionably the right decision.

Dropping rumble support from its controller was never a design-led decision for Sony in the first place, after all. The firm's stances on rumble being too hard to integrate with motion sensing (which Hirai trotted out again yesterday), or simply being a last-generation feature not suited to the new SIXAXIS pad, were developed in retrospect to cover up the reality of the situation - a messy patent dispute with haptic feedback firm Immersion.

There was no mention of Immersion during Hirai's TGS keynote, which is perhaps a shame; a little honesty on this front could have gone a long way to confirming his rhetoric about Sony humbly returning to basics. However, the company's settlement with Immersion is the event which opened the doors to the creation of Dual Shock 3; the breakthrough here was made by Sony's legal team, not its researchers and engineers.

Of course, Sony should have sorted out this problem before the PS3 launched, rather than leaving users with crippled controllers for the first 12 months of the console's lifespan - and there's no doubt that an overhaul of the controller a year after launch isn't exactly what the firm's bosses would have wanted.

However, it's hardly the first time that this has happened. The original Dual Shock controller was introduced during the lifespan of the original PlayStation, replacing a pad which had no analogue sticks and no rumble function, and quickly became the de facto controller. Microsoft, too, has faced an even more similar situation; it replaced the widely derided, oversized Xbox controller with the far more comfortable Controller S model only a few months into the lifespan of the console.

In both cases, the change was hailed as a positive move - the Dual Shock launched to rave reviews, while the Controller S was seen as evidence of Microsoft's willingness to listen to its consumers, learn from its mistakes, and adapt quickly to meet the demands of the audience. More than anything else Microsoft has done in the console market, the introduction of Controller S created a reputation as a nimble, reactive company - no mean feat for a firm whose activities in other markets are renowned for being quite the opposite.

We don't expect Dual Shock 3 to receive quite the same level of rapturous response. Some early adopters may be annoyed at having to buy new controllers, of course, but the overall response is likely to lie somewhere between "oh, good" and "about time" on the sliding scale of consumer enthusiasm. There will also, of course, be some inevitable sniping from the sidelines about the firm's U-turn on the issue.

In the medium to long term, however, the move to Dual Shock 3 is an unqualified positive for Sony. The lack of rumble is not only a stick which its competitors and detractors could use to beat the PS3; it was also the kind of feature which the average consumer understands, and which most consumers want. Haptic feedback may presently be a blunt instrument in terms of user interface, but it has become a standard feature of videogames, and its absence in the PS3 was a definite negative.

As to the remainder of Sony's keynote at TGS, it's hard to be particularly enthused about what Hirai had to show - largely because there was very little there which hadn't already taken a public bow at E3 back in July. Hopes that the keynote would unveil key new software for PS3 did not come to fruition - and while the future line-up for the console is stronger than its critics claim, it needs to be stronger still if it's to stand up to the increasingly impressive catalogue on the Xbox 360.

Less surprising is the lack of a price cut announcement. As many commentators have noted, late September is arguably a bit too close to the holiday season to cut the price; traditionally, cuts have arrived by early September, in time for retailers to arrange their autumn promotional campaigns. It now seems certain that PS3 will not see a genuine price cut before next Spring, although further "value adjustments" similar to the summer's bundle introductions are likely next month.

It's fair to say that the TGS keynote, despite the Dual Shock 3 announcement, was something of a missed opportunity for Sony - especially coming as it did only days before the release of Halo 3, one of Microsoft's biggest hopes for the autumn and holiday seasons.

Although the new controller is a positive, and the PS3's line-up is gradually starting to look compelling (although not, perhaps, at the console's high price point), Hirai ultimately fell into the same trap with this keynote as the now-departed Ken Kutaragi did last year. Despite his claim of going back to basics, "basics" in this case should be videogames - instead, the TGS keynote was about future technological possibilities, filled with speculation over virtual worlds, remote play and linked supercomputing power.

Such topics play well at academic conferences or in the pages of Wired magazine - but for a global audience of gamers, the keynote once again failed to establish the PS3 as a videogames system of choice. Reports from the show floor at the Makuhari Messe may well help to redress the balance - but for all his fine words about listening to consumers, it seems that Kaz Hirai still hasn't learned how to talk to them.