I’ve just flown back from L.A where the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006 took place and where I was able to check out some of the latest and greatest in the videogame industry. That includes the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii of coure as well as a bunch of other games for both current and “next-gen” consoles.
The title of this post should really be “ask one of the guys who went to E3” as I am not affiliated to the show nor am I the only one in this board to have been there. All other visitors are welcome to chime in with their own comments and impressions of course.
Please keep in mind that the show is huge and I have by no means had the time or inclination to take a look at EVERYTHING but I’ll do my best to answer whatever questions you might have.
Hi there jonathan. I was a guest of Running with Scissors (the guys behind the Postal franchise).
rjung: If I could only buy one? wow, that’s tough. If it wasn’t for MGS4, I’d say the Wii. It was definitely the big winner at the show. If I actually had to recommend only one console to someone. I’d recommend the Wii. No hesitation.
Hi, Neighor: They are both light and comfortable to hold. It takes a little time to get used to the Wii controller (I used broader gestures than were needed) but my first impression is that it’s really going to work. I’m happy with it.
The PS3 controller is a mixed bag when it comes to functionality. I think the 360 pad is a bit more ergonomic (though heavier), I don’t like the absence of Dual Shock and there is a problematic delay between the moment you move the controller around and the moment your action is reflected in the game. Read my next post for more on that and Warhawk
Anyways, I played Warhawk of course. The game looks good. Beautiful water, lots of small planes flying everywhere. I was wondering one thing and maybe you can clarify this for me. What is the lag time between controller motion and ship motion? I know there is a very discernable one and I have some footage of someone playing the game so I can probably estimate it later on but you probably can get more accurate numbers.
If the lag was so small as to be unnoticeable by the human mind, the gamer could basically harness twitch reflexes while playing the game. The moment noticeable lag enters the equation, the player has to compensate for it and it involves a bit more thinking and a bit more delay. The whole experience becomes much less intense and engaging. Kinda like playing an FPS with 250 ms ping vs playing in a LAN with <5 ms ping.
I’m hoping against hope that the lag can be brought down to such levels.
Wow, I’m disappointed to hear about lag with the PS3 controller. Was it just “moving the controller” lag, or was it general lag (buttons also).
I once used a wireless controller for my PS2, and discontinued its use shortly thereafter, because of the lag. Even though it was probably a small delay, like 100ms, it was too much for me to deal with, especially playing Shadow Hearts.
I can’t give you any hard numbers on the actually latency of the controller. Even if I knew them (which I don’t) there’s no way that I could reveal them publicly.
However I can say that most of the lag that you saw in the plane in the demo is INTENTIONAL. We tuned the Warhawk’s physics to make it kind of swoopy so that it actually feels like you’re flying. In fact, our pre-E3 builds were even more swoopy, but the Sony higher-ups had us tighten it up to better demo the controller. (From your response maybe we should have tightened it more … .)
You can verify what I’m saying by looking at the motion of the targeting reticle (if you can make it out on the videos) rather than the motion of the plane itself. You’ll notice that it always LEADS the motion of the plane. When you move the controller the reticle instantly responds, and then the plane follows a few frames later.
I watched a lot of people playing on the show floor. Within a few minutes of picking up the new controller almostly everyone I saw was able to position the reticle well enough to shoot down small moving targets. They wouldn’t have been able to do that if there was significant controller latency.
I was there, too, courtesy of Eidos. If you made it up to their private room, we might have met.
The most popular item seemed to be a plastic necklace with flashing red LEDs that Webzen was handing out. Seemed like every one on the floor was wearing one of those. For their WW2 RTS Company of Heros, THQ was handing out maps of Normandy written in German, that came in a paper envelope made up to look like a WW2-era document pouch. And on the more inscrutable side of the swag equation, GameFactory was handing out moist towelettes.
That is very reassuring to hear. I didn’t pay attention to the reticule but I do remember shooting small targets without much trouble which is consistent with your explanation.
I hope you will consider providing an option to specify the delay in the final game when it ships. In fact, for such an important piece of gameplay, maybe you can include an in-game calibration a la HALO* so that people can pick whatever they’re most comfortable with thus satisfying both those who want realism and those who want twitch action.
*At the beginning of the game, HALO allows you to choose whether you want the character to look up when you move the right analog stick forward or vice versa.
I ran into Vince from RWS on Friday at the Akella booth. We’ve always gotten along well. We’ve done some coverage on them and such. Good people.
Miller, what were you doing in the Eidos booth?
Gamefactory was giving out the wipes because they’re run of games is aimed at the parents of young (3-7) children. I took some with me, being able to fit that demographic. Heck, I had a blast at their booth during out meet.
Coolest swag by me: Star Wars LEGO figures that LucasArts let you assemble in any combination to promote LEGO: Star Wars II.
It was just “moving the controller” lag. Keep in mind that all the controllers were attached to the console (to prevent theft and to eliminate interference). But you don’t need to worry about wireless delay, it’s non-existent on the 360 and it will be non-existent with the PS3.
In Nintendo’s booth, all the controllers were wireless. Theft was not an issue as each booth was manned by an attendant but it does bode well for Nintendo that they were not worried about wireless interference .
YellowTail: I didn’t see any on the floor but I did see videos of Forza Motorsports 2 and I have no doubt it will be a very good simulation game. (it’s Microsoft’s answer to Gran Turismo). Haven’t heard anything about an upcoming flying sim however.
Queen of the felines: I didn’t bother with swag this time around.
That’s already planned. We’ll let the player pick whether he uses the sticks or the sensors and we’ll also give him some control over how sensitive the sensors are.
(Sony managment also asked that we set the controller sensitivity higher than we had previously tuned for, so smaller controller movements produced larger plane movements. They were trying to show off the angular sensitivity of the controller but we thought it made the plane feel a little too twitchy. We’ll probably set the default to be a little less sensitive so it’s easier for the beginning player to hold the plane level.)
It’s interesting to play using the new motion sensors. With the existing Dual Shock controller most people don’t really use the analog nature of the analog sticks that much. They tend to peg the sticks to one side or the other and feather their control with pulses or flicks. Although theoretically they could be holding the stick in an intermediate position to get an intermediate input, they don’t tend to do so. But with the new motion sensors you have a lot larger range of motion available to you, which makes it much easier to feather your input by actually holding the control in an intermediate position.
There’s one other new thing about the new controller that people aren’t talking about much. Sony has changed the R2 and L2 shoulder buttons so they have a much deeper sweep. This will make them much more useful as analog controls, for example as the accelerator in a driving game.
The PS3 controllers in the separate VIP chambers were running in wireless mode for most of the show. (Sometimes they were plugged in so they could recharge.) They seemed to work just fine even in the very electrically noisy environment of E3.
We had initially planned to run wireless out on the floor as well, but the floor kiosks were set up with **8 ** dev kits rack-mounted in a stack in the middle. The dev kits were only inches apart and this did cause some problems with occasional drop outs and so we decided on the first day to keep the controllers connected.
What about the delay though? Will the user be able to control that also?
What you say about the analog sticks is very true.
Yep. I meant to mention that earlier. Sony completely redesigned them (about time too).
By the way, since you were there last year, excepting Warhawk, how do you think the PS3 playable demos compared to the 360 demos from both last year and this year? What do you think it says about the technical potential of each console?