Xbox 360 controller's buttons aren't analog (pressure sensitive)?

shipwreck

shipwreck

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From an IGN article with Itagaki from Team Ninja:

Famitsu Xbox goes into specifics on Team Ninja's lineup. First up is DOAX2, which Itagaki reveals is a true sequel to Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball. In addition to volleyball, DOAX2 will include one additional main game. Volleyball and the new game will serve as the pillars for DOAX2, but Team Ninja is also planning on adding other means of waterside fun as well as a more robust casino element. Regarding the volleyball gameplay, Itagaki states that because the buttons on the Xbox 360 controller are not analogue, the gameplay will have to be adjusted accordingly.
Click to expand...

This is surprising news to me. Although very few games seemed to take advantage of the analog buttons, this still seems like a step back for me. Also this would pretty much make games that used the analog buttons on the Xbox uncompatible with the Xbox 360. If this is indeed true, this is disappointing news.
 
[quote name='el bobo']Hopefully they can just alter it so you can use the new trigger buttons instead.[/QUOTE]

That wouldn't really help for the backwards compatible games though.
 
[quote name='shipwreck']That wouldn't really help for the backwards compatible games though.[/QUOTE]

I'm quite surprised that Microsoft has screwed up so badly on the whole backwards compatibility issue. Why does their new 360 architecture requre specific programming for each original Xbox game to play on it? That means it will be expensive and time-consuming for them to make even a small portion of the old Xbox library compatible with 360. :cry:
 
[quote name='Chris in Cali']What does this mean? They're not pressure sensitive?[/QUOTE]

Yes, that is what it means.
 
[quote name='shipwreck']Yes, that is what it means.[/QUOTE]

That's terrible. It can add so much more depth to a game when used properly. Now if you're playing a drving/running/gta game I guess you're either going full speed or not at all, or you'll have to do the whole stop-go thing.
 
[quote name='Chris in Cali']That's terrible. It can add so much more depth to a game when used properly. Now if you're playing a drving/running/gta game I guess you're either going full speed or not at all, or you'll have to do the whole stop-go thing.[/QUOTE]

Well, most driving games use the triggers for gas and brakes so those would still be analog. I really don't understand the reasoning behind not making these buttons analog though. I wouldn't have even thought that this would have been an issue had not Itagaki stated something about it.
 
Good riddance. Analog buttons are worthless.

The only time I ever remember even remotely depending on them is to withdraw your weapon in MGS2.

Name one game where analog buttons are integral.
 
[quote name='Megalith']Good riddance. Analog buttons are worthless.

The only time I ever remember even remotely depending on them is to withdraw your weapon in MGS2.

Name one game where analog buttons are integral.[/QUOTE]

Well, they were a nice touch in DOAX. I'm pretty sure a lot of racing games did use the pressure sensitive buttons as well. They were just another option for developers to develop with.
 
[quote name='shipwreck']Well, they were a nice touch in DOAX. I'm pretty sure a lot of racing games did use the pressure sensitive buttons as well. They were just another option for developers to develop with.[/QUOTE]
well if that is the case, it won't bother my gaming at all. I don't play racing games besides Burnout, and DOAX wasn't for me.
 
This is terrible news. Even though I can only recall using pressure sensitive functions in PS2 games, it was an extremely important feature to those games. It was very important in the Metal Gear Solid series, and is the difference between firing your gun into space and alerting everything and just drawing it. Does this mean no more check swings in baseball games too? In racing games like Gran Turismo its really important too, sometimes its better to just tap the gas than go full throttle.
And football games too, does this mean we're only going to be able to throw bullet passes now?
 
I actually remember switching everything to digital in DOAX. Just found it simpler.

One game that was an absolute pain was AC04 on PS2. Basically, in order to use full afterburners, you had to depress the shoulder button on the PS2 controller all the way in since it was analog only, and that's not fun when you have to fly across an entire stage, or maneuvering in dog fights, all situations in which you'd be using full thrust anyway.

I ended up plugging in a PSOne controller, as I do for many PS2 games.
 
[quote name='Megalith']I actually remember switching everything to digital in DOAX. Just found it simpler.[/QUOTE]

Well, it was a lot simpler to play it on digital, but I found it a lot more fun to play it with the analog buttons. I thought the pool hopping game was very enjoyable with the analog buttons, but basically pointless with the digital buttons.
 
Wow....I never even realized the Xbox buttons were pressure sensitive. I guess I'm just an idiot. I play racing games a lot too lol.
 
Is there any word on anybody making USB controller cable ends for the orginal XBox controllers, to make them work with the 360?
 
I do wonder what they will do with madden 06 though. Before if you hit the button hard it would through a bullet pass and if you hit is softer it would through a softer slower pass. Maybe they'll have 2 buttons (1 for a bullet pass, 1 for a soft pass).
 
The Xbox 360 has a different graphics chip than the original Xbox. Microsoft could've been fully compatible if we all were willing to play at least $500 for the 360. But then you'd all be bitching that the 360 was too expensive. They can't please everyone so they made it cheaper so you could still buy games at launch.


It's a great time to be cheap ass gamer.
 
[quote name='depascal22']The Xbox 360 has a different graphics chip than the original Xbox. Microsoft could've been fully compatible if we all were willing to play at least $500 for the 360. But then you'd all be bitching that the 360 was too expensive. They can't please everyone so they made it cheaper so you could still buy games at launch.


It's a great time to be cheap ass gamer.[/QUOTE]


What an idiot.
 
uncompatible? That's unpossible!

The number of grammatical and spelling errors in this thread is astounding. Grammar and spelling usually don't bother me, but this is ridiculous.
 
[quote name='momadaboo']I do wonder what they will do with madden 06 though. Before if you hit the button hard it would through a bullet pass and if you hit is softer it would through a softer slower pass. Maybe they'll have 2 buttons (1 for a bullet pass, 1 for a soft pass).[/QUOTE]
In NFL2K for DC, for a bullet pass you simply hold down the button longer, tap it for a lob....the longer you hold down the button, the less of an arc.
No worries here.
 
[quote name='ragtop70']uncompatible? That's unpossible!

The number of grammatical and spelling errors in this thread is astounding. Grammar and spelling usually don't bother me, but this is ridiculous.[/QUOTE]

I find it ridiculous that you find this thread that unreadable. Yes, I made a mistake with incompatible, but the whole thread is completely understandable. You must have just started using the internet if you feel the need to make a post regarding the "astounding" grammatical and spelling errors in this thread.
 
[quote name='opportunity777']I always end up just hammering the brake and gas too hard with racing games anyways, so no loss for me.[/QUOTE]

Lol :)
 
You think it might have to do with the controllers being wireless? Just a thought. This wireless controller is the first of its kind on the market. Its not only sending data for button commands and receiving data for rumble function, its also receiving and sending data for the headset. Maybe there was a problem there if all the buttons were analog. That's the best guess I can come up with without saying the analog buttons (triggers different story) were barely used.
 
Well the way I look at it is, in 90% of games the pressure buttons aren't even used and in the 10% of the games that do use them I'm sure that they can figure out other ways to compensate for the lack of them like holding down the button for longer or shorter periods of time (like someone else said) or using 2 buttons instead of one. Not a big deal people.
 
can somebody give me a link to a place where it says the Xbox controller was pressure sensitive, not being a smart ass by the way, i just never knew! lol
 
[quote name='MaxBiaggi2']I'm quite surprised that Microsoft has screwed up so badly on the whole backwards compatibility issue. Why does their new 360 architecture requre specific programming for each original Xbox game to play on it? That means it will be expensive and time-consuming for them to make even a small portion of the old Xbox library compatible with 360. :cry:[/QUOTE]

It's nowhere near as bad as that. First of all, Microsoft made a licensing deal with Nvidia to use their proprietary chip IP in the Xbox emulation software. This means the initial version will be far more effective than the black box approach I described at length several months on this site.

Second, every game they get running successfully will mean that quite a few others that use the same or similar coding techniques will also be covered. Thus as more games are covered by the emulator the process will accelerate as more and more titles are found to work without any further modifications to the emulator.

The task will still remain to thoroughly playtest the games to certify their full functionality (and to generate the native code profiles) but that is unavoidable. Sony had to do the same thing for the PS2. Some of you might recall that not long after the US launch they released a list of PS1 games that had bugs running on the PS2. The Japanese version of that list is considerably longer since many of the titles had no US version or had been buggier in their Japanese release.

The Xbox 360's ability to play Xbox games won't be perfect but it should quickly cover all of the titles that 90% of the market really cares about. Some features will be lost due to cost cutting. At some point they had a meeting where the subject of analog buttons came up for consideration. After tallying the rarity of their use by developers against their added cost to the product, the math went against them. For now they've gone the way of the R.O.B. peripheral bundled with the NES early on. They may come back in a later generation but most will never notice they were gone. Which is why they got cut from the spec.
 
[quote name='depascal22']The Xbox 360 has a different graphics chip than the original Xbox. Microsoft could've been fully compatible if we all were willing to play at least $500 for the 360. But then you'd all be bitching that the 360 was too expensive. They can't please everyone so they made it cheaper so you could still buy games at launch.


It's a great time to be cheap ass gamer.[/QUOTE]

The issue isn't cost but politics. Nvidia was unhappy about the way Xbox sales went and thelack of payoff for them. So they were disinclined to provide the engineering revisions needed to produce lower cost and physically smaller Xbox models. When the time came to design the 360 it was obvious Nvidia wasn't going to be the graphics silicon vendor.

Nvidia was undone by their own greed. They wanted a merchant relationship with Microsoft instead of delivering a completed design for a higher initial price and allowing Microsoft to seek manufacturing partners as needed. They've formed such a relationship with Sony for their RSX chip in the PS3 in the same manner as ATI has done with Microsoft. Live and learn.
 
[quote name='Morpheus']You think it might have to do with the controllers being wireless? Just a thought. This wireless controller is the first of its kind on the market. Its not only sending data for button commands and receiving data for rumble function, its also receiving and sending data for the headset. Maybe there was a problem there if all the buttons were analog. That's the best guess I can come up with without saying the analog buttons (triggers different story) were barely used.[/QUOTE]

The only conceivable problem I can see is that the analog data, with it's duration factors, would be chattier than purely digital signals and thus create greater power draw but it strikes me as very unlikely it would make such a difference as to require their elimination. Especially when the analog triggers will still be there.

It was about the cost of the controller vs. the likelihood it would be seen as a negative by the majority of the market.
 
I wonder who is making these decisions for Microsoft?
1. There is absolutely no backward compatibility for the $299 version that doesn't have a hard drive.
2. J. Allard has been touting the wireless controllers and hard drive that come packed with all Xbox 360 consoles. In the last month or so, it has been let know that this was basically a lie. For me, one of the biggest selling point of the Xbox was the hard drive. This means I don't have to waste money on memory cards. Surely I'm not alone here.
3. The analog buttons, or lack thereof, mentioned in this thread.
4. Since not all Xbox games will be compatible with the 360 when it launches, I'm assuming more will be made so via downloads. The problem here is that many people do not have Xbox Live. Sure they're giving a year of Live with the $399 system, but many people do not have a broadband connection.
5. Live is only available via broadband. I realize it is the same way on Xbox, but it was a bad idea then too. I couldn't play online with broadband users, but dial-up would still allow me to download patches and updates if I were able to connect. It would take a long time to do these things, but dial-up users would wait a few hours for the download before they'd pay the extra for broadband just to get Live.

I'm wondering why I'm even getting a 360 after typing all that. At least mine will have the hard drive.
 
[quote name='ragtop70']I wonder who is making these decisions for Microsoft?
1. There is absolutely no backward compatibility for the $299 version that doesn't have a hard drive.
2. J. Allard has been touting the wireless controllers and hard drive that come packed with all Xbox 360 consoles. In the last month or so, it has been let know that this was basically a lie. For me, one of the biggest selling point of the Xbox was the hard drive. This means I don't have to waste money on memory cards. Surely I'm not alone here.
3. The analog buttons, or lack thereof, mentioned in this thread.
4. Since not all Xbox games will be compatible with the 360 when it launches, I'm assuming more will be made so via downloads. The problem here is that many people do not have Xbox Live. Sure they're giving a year of Live with the $399 system, but many people do not have a broadband connection.
5. Live is only available via broadband. I realize it is the same way on Xbox, but it was a bad idea then too. I couldn't play online with broadband users, but dial-up would still allow me to download patches and updates if I were able to connect. It would take a long time to do these things, but dial-up users would wait a few hours for the download before they'd pay the extra for broadband just to get Live.

I'm wondering why I'm even getting a 360 after typing all that. At least mine will have the hard drive.[/QUOTE]

Well just remember the most important thing is the actual Xbox 360 games. I think we'll be able to play all of the Xbox games that are even remotely popular so I'm not concerned and you have to remember that the even Premium Edition cost more for Microsoft then for us (they're losing money).
 
What I don't like is when people complain about all of these little things. Exampe: "OMG the Xbox 360 won't be able to play every Xbox game!" Well up until now how many systems have been backwards compatible at all... not very many. Chances the only games that we won't be able to play are the ones that aren't very good to start off with... what a shame.
 
[quote name='momadaboo']Chances the only games that we won't be able to play are the ones that aren't very good to start off with... what a shame.[/QUOTE]

Actually, the only games we won't be able to play are likely to be the ones that didn't sell well, not the ones that "aren't very good." I'm sure first party crap like Grabbed by the Ghoulies will be covered, but I'd like to still be able to play Phantom Dust and Panzer Dragoon, thank you very much.
 
[quote name='trq']Actually, the only games we won't be able to play are likely to be the ones that didn't sell well, not the ones that "aren't very good." I'm sure first party crap like Grabbed by the Ghoulies will be covered, but I'd like to still be able to play Phantom Dust and Panzer Dragoon, thank you very much.[/QUOTE]

Well first of all they probably will be able to play games like Phantom Dust and Panzer Dragoon. I'm talking about games like Shrek. And also if it is really that big of a deal just keep your Xbox.
 
[quote name='tearofangst']can somebody give me a link to a place where it says the Xbox controller was pressure sensitive, not being a smart ass by the way, i just never knew! lol[/QUOTE]

.
 
No big loss to me. I was never really impressed with the analog face buttons on any of the consoles. Didn't have enough range of pull to really have much control over it.

Plus, it sometimes required you to really hammer on the buttons, and I HATE doing that... bothers the fingers after LONG play periods.
 
[quote name='help1']The xbox wasnt pressure sensitive was it?[/QUOTE]

I sure as hell didn't know it and never used it, if it was.

In fact, the only game in which it has had any sort of meaningful use was in the Metal Gear Solids for the PS2.

Analog buttons are all hype.
 
I always liked analog buttons and I didn't like that GC was missing them. Why would they do this?!?

EDIT: Dead or Alive 3 also used analog buttons extensively (light & heavy punches or kicks), though I think more PS2 games used analog than XBOX.
 
[quote name='PenguinMaster']I always liked analog buttons and I didn't like that GC was missing them. Why would they do this?!?[/QUOTE]

maybe to cut costs (again *sigh*)...or maybe there just wont be analog buttons for the wirless one?
 
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