fuchikoma

It seems that the real problem is that publishers aren't responsible enough to handle having the information MC puts out properly (or maybe they are handling it properly from a business stance, but we just don't like what we see? I don't think so - likeable isn't the same as profitable.)

Rev nailed it. For what it's worth, Kotaku kept the "old" site online much longer than some other Gawkers. I think some of the editors even made comments that they understood how people hated the redesign. In the end though, they're all under Nick Denton - who I've also linked to (in this thread?) as sending out a directive to get not just pageviews, but unique pageviews, through provocative and controversial articles. In other words, we can't put all the blame for the trolling and geekbaiting on the writers of these sites, because they're just trying to get paid by doing what the big boss tells them to. It sucks and I'm glad to be mostly rid of that cluster of sites (though I still drop in on Jalopnik once in a while. My destar/permaban seems limited to Kotaku.)

In Western Canada, it's been ages since I've seen paper bags in a grocery store, like 20 years or more. Liquor stores still have them though, probably because they're opaque. Nice and discreet... if it's paper, it's liquor! Some places charge 5-10c for a plastic bag. Most bags are recyclable, though I don't know where. Where I live, bags are usually "#4" plastic and we can only recycle "#2", though the odd place has a bin to accept used ones, presumably to be recycled. We also do the reusable bag thing, but it's sort of rare to see people actually using them.

I have friends who did this, though I'm pretty sure they didn't contact any servers except the one they were running.

What about games where you can still interact with the servers? Creating new accounts, etc? For leeches... I agree, maybe they've lost a few cents; the burden's usually small, but tangible. For games with online passes - problem solved. I'm actually ok with these as long as nothing else is tied to them except online play. For MMOs... anyone who plays on a private server is only cheating themselves. It's so different from a healthy official server population it's not even funny.

That seems kind of hard to measure though, unless there's an actual lack of accuracy with out to in or in to out motions... I've never really gone "aw, I got messed up by the transition!" It's not a problem of moving thumbs independently, but more of removing reference points - like steering with motion controls - what's full lock? I'm trying to think of an analogy for the weirdness of the design, but it's difficult... It's like velcro shoes where they both fasten left to right, or a keyboard that elevates one half of the keys but not the other. Driving a car where it's one half steering wheel, one half handlebar, etc. All perfectly usable - but awkward and unnecessary.

So "out" is toward your body and "in" is toward your index finger? I find I have much finer control when my hands are more open and my thumbs are pointing toward each other. Symmetrical sticks also lend themselves to accuracy better - if I push them together, the left stick is right and the right stick is left. If I move them both left or right, one points toward the other and the other copies it. If I did that on the 360, I'd have the left stick down-right and the right stick up-left, or both in either diagonal configuration. That's probably why they had to put raised bumps on the tops - to give you some sense of orientation. I agree "in" is better for resting position, though I find on Playstation, I'm usually either using the d-pad and buttons or both sticks. Also, for me the awkwardness of the offset is far greater than any discomfort of having my hands slightly open. That's why I'd never choose a fighting game (d-pad and buttons) on an XBox over a Playstation, or usually even a twin-stick shooter (say, GTA4) given the choice. For a Katamari game, I'd even play on PSP with the d-pad and face buttons before I'd use offset joysticks to control it. Any serious gamepad-based rhythm games are out too (not that there are many...) There is just too much it doesn't work with for me that limits the choice of games I'd play. Certainly not impossible. Stick tension adjustment used to be pretty standard in the 80s and the beatmania IIDX standard controller lets you take off the buttons in one block and flip them upside down so you can put the turntable on the left or right side.

Gotta thank my friend Mei for showing me these guys. Never would have found them otherwise. They're certainly Google-resistant!

Newish Syrufit album... When I hear arrangements of this song it still makes me think of this one... which makes it a bit hard to take seriously, heh

Copied from Yantelope's status update: Glyphless AR demoed on Vita. This looks awesome - I've seen point tracking for ages on desktops (wonder if they'll develop something like Photosynth for it?) but I've been waiting for someone to do it right on a handheld. Now I feel like digging out and watching it again. It's about things that happen in a near-future eyeglass-integrated AR world.

Actually, I have pretty girly hands size-wise and my pinkies have nowhere to go either. Most of the time my controller more or less rests on my middle fingers. I've tried to drop DualShocks before though - slack hands and wrists, shaking up and down at the elbows - and even when it starts to bounce, it stays in my hands. To each his own though - I don't want anyone to think I'm arguing that it's objectively better; just countering Yan's assertions that the 360 does it the right way while the DS3 is outdated, or that habit would be the only reason to use it, etc.

Huh... sorry, I stand corrected! That thing's history is even stranger than I'd heard. Thanks for catching me on that. I still stand by my statement about palm-on controllers being the odd ones out though. In gaming it's newer, and far less common than the old "floating" grip. A side thing from the other discussions too - personally I have no problem with the battery "tumor" since I used a Dreamcast for so long... in fact, it improves on the little grip-ledge on the DC. Splitting the battery carrier open to extract slightly thicker rechargeables on the other hand...

Sorry, but... Sony's analog controller was at least 2 years old when the N64 came out so it can't have copied it. And looking at the history of other controllers you hold like the DS3 (also very common to touch edges along index fingers, but palms-off) I'd say it's more that gamers have adapted to the new big chunky controllers and forgotten how to hold all the others - don't feel bad though, it's way more common post-XBox. That's why I bring it up from time to time - there always seems to be someone who hasn't heard of it.

Actually, that's not true. The original Playstation design (after the SNES) included a dual analog controller with longer handles, concave sticks, and a single force feedback motor. That is why you can plug a DualShock in with certain launch titles and still get weak force feedback. I think the story goes that they pulled it out late in development because they were afraid of infringing Nintendo's patents - something that they later went ahead with anyway and have been in trouble multiple times with different companies for their controller design. (I think this is also why only Nintendo can use cross-shaped d-pads. Sad but true... so most use a disc and Sony uses 4 wedges even though they're all the same inside.) That's subjective. I find offset sticks weirder and less comfortable than symmetrical ones, wherever they're placed. The XBox layout is sort of like Nintendo's c-stick concept - except the c-stick was never meant for serious use! That's why they didn't put a wide top on it; it's for cameras and menus. That I think is the real habit based preference - because when you're using the same controls on both sides, what's the advantage of having one at the bottom and one at the top? Convex/concave tops - it makes sense in theory that concave would be better since you could pull instead of push the stick, but since they came in in the mid 1990s, I've never had it make any difference since they're rubberized. My thumb's not concave either, but it is soft and becomes concave when I put it on the DS series stick. It's just a matter of whether the stick holds your thumb or the thumb holds the stick. The texture itself is a wash for me - I don't like feeling the dots on the 360 stick, but it's good to know what absolute UDLR are on it since only Nintendo gates the sticks. In any case, they're both capable of fine movement and I've never had a problem with slipping off any brand's thumbstick, even Mad Catz'. The triggers on the DS3 I'm not crazy about. I prefer the DS2 for this even though they're not analog. I can use them, but they don't feel good. It also seems that the 360 has another 50% pull distance and nice flat resistance across the range. I'll give them the triggers - Sony tried too hard to stick to the old design there. That depends how you hold them, but it's possible. The 360 is more comfortable if you grip it full-on with the palms of your hand, for sure. I'd even say that approach borders on suicidal with the DualShocks. I really don't like doing that with any controller though - it makes hand sweat badly obvious and reduces thumb mobility to switch between pad/buttons and sticks, or greatly increases strain when I do. It's possible not to hold the 360 that way, but it seems to strongly encourage it. You hold a 360 controller a lot like a GameCube or XBox controller. You hold a DualShock series controller like NES, SMS, SNES, TG16, Genesis or Dreamcast controller or a GB/GBA/GBA SP/GG/Nomad/WS/PSP system - resting on fingers, with open palms. I find that far more comfortable. I cringe thinking about how my thumbs would feel after doing something with a full-grip controller (or what my score would be using the 360's d-pad and domed buttons.) Though if you hold it like I do, it's way more comfortable to switch on DS because rather than using the tendons in my thumb to stretch over to the stick, I can just rotate my wrists a tiny bit and my thumb goes to the stick. I actually found for precision control, or even long play sessions, I can keep my thumb pretty much still and subtly twist the controller around to move the stick, which is a godsend if you have RSIs in your hands. Also not impossible on the 360, but the stiffer triggers make it harder to maintain such a loose grip. Not quite sure how you mean the 360's inputs are equidistant and the PS3's aren't... On both, the right stick's right edge overlaps half the left button, and its top edge overlaps half the bottom button. Likewise, the PS3 d-pad and 360 left stick match their center axis to that of the buttons and their edge overlaps half the lower input (PS3 L stick, 360 d-pad.) The bottom inputs on both are the same distance apart - you can put the controllers face to face and they will line up almost perfectly. Actually, seeing this it seems MS was trying to make almost a carbon copy of the DualShocks when it comes to placement - they just swapped pad and stick like the Dreamcast and GameCube (though not the alpha XBox devkit, which is like a 6-button Dualshock / PS3 "boomerang.")

I found another thing to suggest that OLED burn-in may be an issue Sony's guarding against. Games can limit brightness settings independent of the user setting. I fired up the Unit 13 demo today and brought up the brightness controls. I slid it to 100% and it sprang back to about 80-90%. I tried it a few times and it snapped back. Then I switched out of the game and cranked it to 100% on my home screen and it stayed set - then I switched back to U13 and it was back down and impossible to crank up. So it seems that some games with fixed HUD elements will prevent maximum brightness from being set. I can't see it as an anti-cheating thing since ambient light levels are all over the place with portable, or even home systems.

Skills for what though? I don't play in arcades - they don't even exist anymore. So I'd just be shelling out a lot of cash to make setup for fighting games cumbersome and wipe out 20 years of existing training to make me suck again. I think before making claims like that, you should at least have some kind of argument to back it up. A controller so big it fills the hands, domed buttons, and offset sticks are not more ergonomic (maybe if I hooked my thumbs under the controller, used my fingers to press the buttons and had 2 thumbs on my right hand...) Also, how is the DS3 outdated? It fit my hands perfectly 14 years ago, they haven't changed shape, and it has exactly the same buttons as the 360 controller. If anything, the latter is outdated because it uses big old AAs and doesn't have a rotation sensor. Really, neither are because they're for current systems and they don't remove features (beyond removing black and white buttons on the 360.) If you play a game like DJ Max Portable, it'll become obvious why you'd want flatter, low-profile buttons and a controller you can float on your fingers without palming it. A bulky controller with tall buttons only hinders agility. Besides, by your logic, wouldn't all these "DS3 defenders" also reject the Wii, DS and Vita since they're far more radically different than just a chunky version of the DualShock? I've used controllers since the standard was a numpad and joystick with buttons on the sides; I just prefer the DualShocks because they're more comfortable and in my hands, more effective. The 360 controllers aren't unusable like "The Duke," but they are a bit behind for general use in my experience (bad d-pad, twitchy sticks, etc)

Haha... forget it! I grew up playing on a SNES and I'm extremely consistent with a d-pad. With a stick, it's straight back to baby steps (I need 8 unambiguous directions - why use an "analog" input method to press them, even if it really just clicks 8 microswitches? That's like eating pizza with a knife and fork.) I can't even imagine doing a move like 6412364 with a stick. It doesn't help that any times I've tried a fighting game in arcades, the difficulty has been cranked way up (or it's just impossible to pull off a basic special move?) so I'd get destroyed right away and be out of cash. Then I'd rent the same game, take it home, and not be done with it until I could do literally every* move on demand. The only reason I can think of for a stick is if I was hardcore into Capcom and their 6-button system, but I prefer SNK and ASW... (and Tecmo. *trollface*) My only specialty controllers are for Beatmania IIDX and Guitar Hero (and you know what? I'll play 5-key Beatmania with a DualShock 2 all day long! Wahaha...) (* Ok - not Kano's finisher on MK1 for SNES. Never met someone who can do that. "Genesic Emerald Tager Buster?" (720 spin, C) no sweat - I've done it on the PSP.)

I never saw the need for concave sticks when the convex ones have a grippy surface. Playing games like Gran Turismo, there's no problem moving them as much or little as needed and I've never had a problem with slipping off. I think it's a psychological rather than mechanical thing. I never properly gave a general answer to the opening question; I'll riff off P4's style since it was so readable. For me, the top modern controllers are: DualShock 2 - Likes: Great ergonomics, quick positive action, very hard to drop, symmetrical sticks, pressure sensitive buttons Dislikes: Screw hole under d-pad can cause blisters when playing fighting games. DualShock 3 - Likes: Same as above. Wireless. Battery lasts a long time. USB chargeable. Dislikes: Same as above. Triggers work, but don't inspire confidence. Li-Ion batteries have a nominal life of 3 years. GameCube standard - Likes: Extremely easy to learn and remember controls. Fits hands well. Triggers "click" into fully-depressed position. Dislikes: Face buttons imply certain design (main, secondary, 2 options.) C stick has limited use. XBox 360 first type - Likes: Has the usual post-SNES layout. Headset jack on controller. Not too big like last gen. Can use AAs, so it'll work long after it's unsupported. Triggers have long, even throw. Dislikes: Lopsided sticks for not-lopsided hands. Sticks lack deadzone - when they start to slacken, they flip out and the controller becomes useless. Battery gauge is bad with NiMH - can quickly go from "2" to "0" after showing "3" for weeks. Battery carrier has to be "cracked" open to dump rechargeables out. Buttons too domed for really fast use. D-pad lacks some accuracy. Fills my hands. Wii classic controller - Likes: SNES pad. Dislikes: Wii remote. PS Move - Likes: Very accurate 3D positioning. 4 main face buttons + "Move" and trigger. Accurate angular rate sensor is good for using XMB menus. Dislikes: No absolute yaw/pitch/roll sensing - can drift off calibration - I can't get any "light gun" games to work. Wiimote - Likes: Dedicated power button can shut console off without seeing the screen. Perfect tracking of yaw, pitch and roll. Dislikes: Motion control is often vague. Can be hard to read depth. Shape is poor for most games. Not many buttons; "1 and 2" are only good when held sideways. Dead weight with classic controller. Has a speaker built-in. SNES pad was great too, but IMO what strengths it has are a subset of the DualShocks or 360 controllers... apart from the ideal d-pad.

Like FDS says, no palming - these things hold surprisingly tight if you just have fingertips in the dimples. With that side-grip, I can't see myself accidentally hitting the stick - though I HAVE done it on purpose now. In Wipeout, I set it to the classic controls, and while holding X to accelerate, I used my thumb joint to nudge the right stick down to look behind me. It's kind of clever bunching them together like that, I think. Sort of like how we learned to use the joint to press buttons on the 4-button clusters on controllers today, now you can use buttons and stick with the same thumb, at least for crude movements.

That sucks... though some percentage of any device will be defective. Hope the next one's 100% there and lasts!

This week's history lesson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxlujC8A004 and if that's not enough...