Sony has made another proclamation that apparently goes against the common wisdom of the gaming community by announcing that their decision to take out the rumble feature in the Sixaxis controller was based upon their reasoning that the PS3 had no place for "last generation" technology. To go along with that statement, Sony claimed that the rumble feature was basically obsolete.
Phil Harrison, Sony President of Worldwide Studios, said, "I believe that the Sixaxis controller offers game designers and developers far more opportunity for future innovation than rumble ever did. Now, rumble I think was the last generation feature; it’s not the next-generation feature. I think motion sensitivity is. And we don’t see the need to do that. Having said that, there will be specific game function controllers, potentially like steering wheels that do include vibration or feedback function–not from us but from third parties."
Evidently, Harrison has not been listening to what developers have said about the Sixaxis. Last week, Bethesda Softworks’ Peter Hines offered his views on it in an interview with IGN.
Hines said, "We didn’t think about doing anything with the Sixaxis stuff. We just wanted to make sure it played well and doing something new with the Sixaxis just wasn’t even necessary. Obviously if we ever have a game that would work well with the ‘axis then we would consider using it… but that wasn’t an option for Oblivion." Hines went on to say that the rumble feature was still valuable in his eyes. "… to be honest I would rather have the rumble instead of the Sixaxis motion stuff… when you’re playing Oblivion it’s nice to feel the weapons connecting with an opponent, so the absence of the rumble is notable when playing Elder Scrolls."
The question must be asked, if Bethesda feels this way, how many more developers share this opinion of the Sixaxis? Developers aside, the game community still loves its rumble feature–regardless of what company executives feel about its obsolescence.
