Immersion CEO Vic Viegas responded to recent comments made by Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Kaz Hirai regarding the expensiveness of rumble implementation in the PS3 controller.
Viegas said in a phone interview, “[Hirai’s] saying that [combining rumble and tilt in a controller] isn’t a technical problem any longer, so I’m glad their engineers figured that out—even though we knew the day after [Sony’s press release] how to do it."
In May this year, Sony said that the PS3 controller, recently named Sixaxis, would be rumble-free because “vibration itself interferes with information detected by the [tilt] sensor.”
Viegas continued, “But now [Sony] seems to say that the solution for the two technologies to work side-by-side is too expensive. … [Immersion] knows of ways to combine these two technologies without incremental increase to the cost. We’ve helped at least one other party do this as well. It doesn’t really make any sense to me to say that the solution is really more expensive. I just don’t believe it is.”
Viegas then pointed to one Immersion licensee that has released a wired USB controller with rumble and tilt built in. eDimensional’s G-Pad Pro is compatible with PS2 and PC and goes for $29.95. However, the G-Pad is wired and only boasts four directions of tilt control, compared to the Sixaxis’ wireless capabilities and “six degrees of freedom.”
“[eDimensional] is a smaller, third-party licensee that doesn’t have nearly the volume that Sony does, and if they can combine the two [technologies] for that kind of price, I have to believe that Sony can do even better than that,” Viegas said.
Sony revealed this week that the Sixaxis would cost around the equivalent of $42 in Japan.
Viegas’ fervor comes from a recent interview with Hirai, in which he said that the controversial decision to leave rumble out of the Sixaxis was a “strategic” move intended to keep the price of the controller down for consumers.
“[We’d be] doing the consumer a huge disservice by coming up with a controller that is not very affordable,” Hirai said.
Skeptics insist that the exclusion of rumble stems from the legal battles between Sony and Immersion regarding patent infringement of force feedback technology. Viegas said that he had just attended a hearing at an appeals court yesterday regarding the Sony case.
For now, it appears that while Immersion has the upper hand in court, videogames’ top dog is passing on becoming an Immersion licensee. “We haven’t found any common ground that would allow us to resolve this,” said Viegas, indicating that the battle with Sony is at a standstill. “At this stage, it appears that they’re comfortable launching a product without vibration. We’ll be interested to see what the consumers have to say about that.
“…You can predict all you want, but I think … [Sony] will feel it in their pocketbook. I think they’ll realize that this was a poor choice and that gamers are smarter than what they take them for,” Viegas concluded.