Last week's rumor:
This has been a busy week for Nintendo fans in terms of Revolution rumors, and while I normally consider rumors too unsubstantiated to include officially, there’s been interesting events happening this week. To begin with, I’m happy to report that my opinion was vindicated when better Japanese speakers than myself revealed that the Revolution controller talked about in my post on the 24th of June is almost certainly a fake. The Japanese written on the poster is… well… screwy. Certainly not an official document, at least.
More Interesting Revolution Rumors:
A far more interesting rumor came from an
old Nintendo patent that resurfaced on GameRadar.com, who accidentally mistook it as a new filing. At first, people took it to be the patent for the highly talked-about, little-seen Revolution controller; there is a great deal of talk in the patent about using a device that could identify motion in a 3D space, accurately judging distance, direction, and exact angle of movement. When this news article
made it onto joystiq.com, it was posted with the comment that, “it doesn’t feature anything that we haven’t been speculating about for months now.” This turns out to be absolutely true. If you take a
look at the images included with the patent, it’s pretty evident that this is referring to something designed for the GameCube and GBA generation, not the DS and Revolution generation. Not that we’ve seen this technology really show up, yet, but it’s certainly not specifically designed for the Nintendo Revolution, that’s for sure.
The problem with touch screens on the Revolution Rumors:
What’s interesting, though, is the response people have to these sorts of posts in the forums and blogs around the Internet. Specifically, people tend to complain about the lack of force feedback from any potential touch screen interface. In other words, people are worried that without the feeling of a button sinking and rising under your fingers when you press, the controls would never feel comfortable. It’s not a small complaint, and other technology toys besides game systems have had to deal with this problem. When
light-projected keyboards first made an appearance, in which a optical keyboard is projected onto a flat surface using lasers, and then typed on as if real, the creators quickly discovered that no one like using a silent and solid keyboard. People liked feeling the keys under their fingers.
The reason not to jump to conclusions:
However, it’s important to realize that an actual physical reaction is not necessary to generate the feeling of interaction. Researchers discovered that adding a clicking noise, as you’d expect to hear from a regular keyboard, whenever you pressed a new key adequately satisfied most users of the light-keyboards. Another company, called
Immersion, has developed a touch screen that vibrates to simulate the feeling of pushing a button, though how such a device would affect the battery life of a wireless controller, I have no idea. The point is, most people think of force feedback is the actual, physical feeling of a button pressing on touch, and it’s not. In fact, any sort of reaction at all is enough. The lack of tactile response from the controller is probably a beatable obstacle if Nintendo really wanted to include such a thing. I’m not saying that they will, just that it’s too early for anyone to be waving the wand of dismissal, just yet.
