Sony Announces Dual Shock 3 Controller (September 19, 2007)

Wired.com wrote:

At his keynote address kicking off Tokyo Game Show 2007, Sony Computer Entertainment group CEO Kaz Hirai announced that Sony will replace the Sixaxis PlayStation 3 controller with the DualShock 3, which includes the force-feedback "rumble" functionality that was left out of the original design.

The controller will be released in November 2007 in Japan, and in the spring of 2008 in the US and Europe. Hirai said that existing PS3 titles can be updated to feature rumble functionality via network updates.

When the lack of force feedback was announced at E3 2006, it was assumed that it was due to pending litigation with Immersion, a company that claimed patent rights to rumble in game controllers. But since the two companies have ended the litigation process, rumble in Sony products is possible again.

In his speech, Hirai avoided any mention of the Immersion litigation, choosing to characterize the new feature as a technological breakthrough. "At the beginning, we thought it would be very difficult technologically," to include both motion-sensing and rumble in a single controller unit, he said, notwithstanding the fact that Nintendo was able to do it with its Wii remote.

"However, we have been able to overcome this difficulty," Hirai said.

The outer shell of the controller will remain the same, he said.

Several games on the Tokyo Game Show floor have the new controllers attached to them, including Metal Gear Solid 4, Ratchet and Clank Future, and Echochrome. Hirai showed very briefly a large list of games that will use the feature -- here's a picture of the list.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/09/tgs-2007-sony-a.html

great so now they are gonna charge people that have spent 600 bucks on the machine about another 60-70 bucks to get a rumble feature.. congratz sony, you butt munches.

What gets me isn't that they are going to spend more to get something that they should have gotten in the first place, it is that chances are most games (aside from the PS2 and PS1 playable games) are NOT going to support it.

What I mean by NOT is that too few of games will probably take advantage of it since it was a late add-on, therefore unlike the PS2 and the later PS1, it may have a limited resource of supported titles. Who knows, hope I am wrong on this actually.