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Mar 2 / Ozymandias

Rumble Support is back for the PS3 (Oh, and Kotaku)

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Appears Sony finally bit the bullet and paid up to Immersion.

The cost of manufacturing the PS3 is a huge problem for Sony. When we look at best-case scenarios for the PS3 business it's quite obvious that there's nowhere near as much money to be made over the life of the program (as compared to PS2) due to those costs. Blu-Ray is a big bet to offset that, but if Blu-Ray fails, the PS3 P&L is in big trouble.

There have been plenty of exterior hints to this issue for quite some time. Non-bundling of a high-def cable is a minor example (could easily save tens of millions over life of program). Removal of hardware-enabled backward compatibility is another. And the attempt to not support rumble in the PS3 program (and have to pay royalties to Immersion) is yet another.

What we don't know is what drove the settlement. My best guess is that the case wasn't going well for Sony around back-royalties for the PS2 program. Reading the tea leaves, they could see they'd be paying up for that, and when you add in the almost universal pressure from gamers and the press to support rumble they probably figured they might as well go all the way. The interesting question is what happens next.

Sony's already getting flack for removing features (such as hardware-enabled backward compatibility) before they're even finished launching worldwide. Now we're in a situation where there's yet another feature that early adopters could be missing out on. This assumes, of course, that Sony releases a new rumbling version of the controller in the coming year – and I think it's pretty likely. Game developers have been asking for this support since day one, and as soon as it's in the PS3 SDK they'll enable it in their games. (Why not? In many cases the work is already done for the 360 version.) Consumers will buy the new controller to play with rumble support. And ironically, Sony "wins" and has a new peripheral to sell… and one that will likely cover the costs of the settlement within a few years.

All that said, I just wonder why they didn't pay up at the beginning before launching and save themselves the pain of flagellating early adopters yet again. Probably a case of believing the brand would carry them through.

Anyway, on a different topic, a bunch of you have written asking what I thought of the whole Sony/Kotaku dustup. I didn't write about it because, frankly, it was just dumb. While there's a fair point about having a relationship where a company can share information with the press and have reasonable expectations about it not being shared until the time is right, that expectation just doesn't apply to information received outside of those channels. Sony should have simply "no commented" it and ignored it, even if it was 100% true. The story would have faded away, been "OMG confirmed!" next week at GDC, and in the end, Sony would have gotten an extra week of positive press coverage. Trying to shut down the story was just embarrassing, and I think Kotaku did the right thing. That said, I have to say I'm impressed by how quickly Sony backed down and basically apologized. They're learning – six months ago the company would have put their head in the sand and tried to bluff their way through. There's hope for the future.

[Edit: brainfart, and erronously had Joystiq instead of Kotaku throughout the article.]

Related posts:

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  2. Enhanced Support Service for Xbox 360
  3. New York Time’s Circuits Buying Guide for Consoles
  4. Another bet on Sony Hardware…
  5. Back from Hiatus

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  • Jake

    Wasn’t it the Kotaku/Sony dustup?

  • Sonrics

    pretty sure it was Kotaku… ;)

  • http://www.kotaku.com Crecente

    Yes, it was us.

    :)

  • Trellium

    The way it was handled was silly by Sony, but at least it looks to be resolved.

    Thing is that the idea is pretty good, from what I understand it to be.

    In our family we play card games when we are together; often lesser known rules-variations. What would be great is if we could all four play together on a 360, in a 3d room "world", with a deck of cards and a table to place them on, but would be great with a Mii like character representation. Ideally we would also have a VOIP conference call.

    Or, to have all of those board games available (at an extra cost of course). So, it becomes a 3d world that emulates a games room, and you can buy more games of various types from the marketplace. Especially when wanting to play with a wide range of ages, or people who are sick (or old folks home) and needing a bit of diversion.

    Not all online games have to be shooters or arcade. There is plain old functionality to be had that has a wider interest. Its not as good as being together in person, but sometimes that’s not an option. MS wants to have an xbox in every living room, but I think to do that you need a living room (or games room) in every 360.

    I assumed this is where Nintendo would go with the Mii idea eventually, since its a way that families can play together even when they are all at different parts of the world.

  • Anonymous

    Fixed – thanks! Not sure why I thought Joystiq.

  • http://www.jasoncross.org Jason Cross

    Oh hey, just for the record –

    the PS3 isn’t fully losing hardware-enabled backward compatibility. What’s happening is, instead of having both the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer chips in there, they’re dumping the EE and keeping the GS.

    I’m guessing the dual vector streaming processor makeup of the EE will be fairly easy to emulate with Cell.

    Anyway, they’re going from "full hardware back-compat" to "half-hardware back-compat." I still anxiously await a list of which games are supported. For that matter, I’m anxiously awaiting the next BC update from you guys. And the next dash update – hopefully we’ll hear a lot more about that at GDC.

    BTW Andre – readers of your blog might be interested in knowing if you’ll be at GDC, and have time for us to stop and say "hi."

  • RJ

    Hey Ozy

    You forgot to replace Kotaku with Joystiq near the end of the paragraph.

  • ……

    only masturbating girls care about vibration

  • http://www.satori.org madsax

    When someone mentions vibration and girls in the same post, a link to this is absolutely necessary:

    http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2002/10/26/sex_in_games_rezvibrator.html

  • Anonymous

    Re: "BTW Andre – readers of your blog might be interested in knowing if you’ll be at GDC, and have time for us to stop and say "hi."

    Yep – will be there as of Sunday. Won’t be in any booth regularly, though, so will need to meet people ad-hoc.

  • …

    "Now we’re in a situation where there’s yet another feature that early adopters could be missing out on."

    microsoft has no right to say that when they are planning to release HDMI Xbox 360. and don’t say hdmi is not important. it is important for those who do care about hdmi. rumble is just not as important as hdmi

  • xAngelGabrielx

    First you have to remember that the full specs for hdmi were not finalized til after the release of the 360. Second while hdmi is important to some people (I am looking forward to it) it is not a universal feature like rumble that everyone is able to utilize.

  • Trellium

    "microsoft has no right to say that when they are planning to release HDMI Xbox 360. and don’t say hdmi is not important. it is important for those who do care about hdmi. rumble is just not as important as hdmi"

    This is silly, the original XBOx didn’t include HDMI and have a huge library of games use HDMI, only to have MS pull HDMI from the 360 and call it "last geberation", and then settle a lawsuit and then say its suddenly "next generation" quality again.

  • …

    btw, microsoft sealed their fate with 1080p. they said its not needed this gen. if they deliver more than 20% 1080p content then i can only say they overdelivered what they promised for.

    sony sealed their fate with 1080p. they say 1080p every conference, and if they don’t deliver 80% content in 1080p i can only say they underdelivered what they promised for.

  • HDMI 1.3 vs HDMI 1.1

    "First you have to remember that the full specs for hdmi were not finalized til after the release of the 360."

    what is wrong with HDMI 1.1??? Xenos can’t render games in deepcolour anyway. it is 24bit colour max. get over it

  • Anonymous

    Re: "btw, microsoft sealed their fate with 1080p. they said its not needed this gen. if they deliver more than 20% 1080p content then i can only say they overdelivered what they promised for."

    Love this quote. I believe the comment was actually that 720p is the sweet spot for this generation, and that 1080x games would have to give up features/visual quality to achieve the resolution.

  • Aedrin

    "rumble is just not as important as hdmi"

    Is it even confirmed that they are releasing it? Some rumour sprouted, that doesn’t mean it is confirmed.

    And if you really want to think like that, what is really important? What is important is that it is fun.

    Do you need rumble? No.

    Do you need HDMI? No.

    People have enjoyed them without all these things before. We just come to expect them because others/previous versions had them.

    There are a lot of things that could be added to the GC, or the DS, but it doesn’t need any of those to be fun. Same for all other consoles.

  • Islandkiwi

    Aedrin:

    As an owner of all three consoles, I have to say that I’m noticing the lack of rumble on the ps3…especially because  they’ve released so many driving games.  

    If you owned one console and you never played with rumble before, obviously you wouldn’t miss it.  But when your competitors offer it and you don’t…that’s when people notice the lack of a feature.  I would be ecstatic if Sony re-implements a rumble feature.

    As for the hdmi issue…as far as I’m concerned, hdmi works for some people, but component works for almost everyone.

  • droptop GP

    This blows me away:

    "Sony in January said losses at its games unit will exceed an October forecast of $1.6 billion this fiscal year ending March."