It looks as though Phil Harrison was telling the truth when he called controller rumble a "last gen feature," and he wasn’t just making some crap up to hide Sony’s legal battle with Immersion. Or was he?
Sony revealed their new, rumble-enabled Dualshock 3 a couple of days ago, and have since come forth with a few more details about the controller. It looks like it won’t be making use of Immersion’s next-gen technology, but will be sticking with the same stuff that made the PS2 controller move.
Said Sony Computer Entertainment America’s Kimberly Otzman of the technology, "The rumble feature on the DualShock 3 is the same as DualShock 2." She went on to detail the battery life of the updated piece of hardware, saying, "battery life depends on how often the rumble feature is used. When the rumble feature is completely turned off, it’s equivalent with the Sixaxis (maximum of 30 hours) and when the rumble feature is active it’s about 15 hours, under SCE standard testing conditions."
Okay, so twice the features, half the battery life. Hmm. So will this new unit be replacing the good old Sixaxis as a PS3 pack in?
According to Otzman, "Nothing has been decided yet, stay tuned."
