Apple working on physical game controller for iPads and other iOS devices

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  • Reply 41 of 56
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz View Post


    That's my impression as well - that far from being a "dying category", "Hard Core" games are instead an extremely well-selling and profitable category of products.



    I agree. As long as there are fat neckbeards living in their mother's basement, there will be a market for dedicated game consoles. The soap-adverse masses must be served.
  • Reply 42 of 56
    jnjnjnjnjnjn Posts: 588member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by al_bundy View Post


    that's what you think



    the latest Call of Duty game is a billion $$$ seller every year. Mass Effect is in the hundreds of millions of $$$



    The point is that a touch screen is a virtual game controller and can be virtually anything.

    Being virtual will never completely replace all actual hardware but it will come pretty close.

    A virtual keyboard is a perfect example what virtual can do. People will soon find actual hardware keyboards cumbersome and clunky and cannot understand how they were used in the past. Young people don't even see the problem.



    J.
  • Reply 43 of 56
    shadowxprshadowxpr Posts: 162member
    This will happened and this is why;



    1. vita and Nintendo DS can only be upgrade every 4-5 years and mobile phones/talet every year which means mobile will always have the more powerful CPU/GPU.



    2. Bluetooth 4.0 on the iPhone and iPad makes this very easy to develope. A controller case for iPhone/iPod and a wireless controller for iPad on Bluetooth 4.0 are the way to go.



    3. Gaming market share is already huge on mobile without physical controllers, adding them means they will control the market making gaming handhelds irrelevant as they have done with point and shoot cameras.



    4. Gaming is a multimillion sector and that can't be ignore, especially with mobile gaming growth at the moment.



    5. In the end nintendo and Sony will release the games on iOS platforms if they become a huge install base with physical controllers, so big that they will never gain the same market with there own handhelds.



    IMHO iPad hard wear is competitive with PSP vita now in 2-3 years it will blow it away in both hardware and sales, it makes since for ios to get physical controllers addons and the end Mario and brake will be release where the install base is = iOS...
  • Reply 44 of 56
    tipootipoo Posts: 1,141member
    I sure hope so! Lack of controllers really holds back the complexity of mobile games imo, without proper controls you're pretty much stuck with simplistic affairs. I really hope this is true, controllers on Android tablets like the Transformer Prime are pretty good.



    After that I guess the limit is how big the game can be. Dual layer blu ray disks are up to 50GB which is more than most iPads have in total, let alone how large a single app can use (what is that limit now? I think they just increased it?), and even with 9GB DVDs some games like RAGE have to use multiple disks on the 360.



    With SGX's Rogue/600 series mobile graphics chips coming out next year, the next iPad could be much more powerful if those are used, with total theoretical FLOPS in the same league as the chips in the PS360 GPUs (around 200Gflops each, although something like the Radeon 7870 is now over 3000). But that would all go to waste (again, IMO) without good controllers and enough install size.
  • Reply 45 of 56
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    I think there is an issue with virtual controls in that you often (but not always) have to look at the controls before you know where to press. Gyro controls also move the image you are looking at, which makes racing games a bit annoying - that's why developers have to counter the movement to keep the horizon level with your eyes.



    Another issue is that the controls are mostly used just by your thumbs as you are holding the device. This is very limiting as you only get two simultaneous inputs. Then there's the problem of your thumbs covering up what you are looking at.



    As for the controller design, I don't think it would be good to follow the common controller designs because there's no point in designing a sleek, compact iPad and have you carry around a huge, awkwardly shaped controller like the 360 controller just to play games.



    I think they just need to build a compact touch slate. I've used this image a few times now but I think it's a solution that would work in many scenarios, even beyond gaming:







    This would be perfectly flat with 3 segmented touch pads with a glass surface. Likely smaller than the picture too. Because it's flat, it can slip into one of the bars of the smart cover.



    If they are really clever, they could find a way to charge it while it's in the smart cover from the iPad battery but I suspect that would over complicate things.



    The pad could have the standard gyro/accelerometer controls. The lines in the pad can be superficial to separate the main controls. It won't give the same number of independent controls as a 360 controller but with the possibility of gestures, it offers enough controls.



    The best thing is that it can double up as a remote for controlling the iPad via Airplay. Because it has no integrated display, that should help keep the cost down so that more than one can be bought and it means the battery lasts longer.



    The shape also means that it's easy to take over to a friend's house in your pocket for multiplayer Real Racing via Airplay using a single iPad.
  • Reply 46 of 56
    gwlaw99gwlaw99 Posts: 134member
    I love all the "I like using the touch screen (and so do most iPad users), so don't expand iPad capabilities" posts. If you don't want a controller, don't buy it. If you don't want to pay $60 for a ported version of Mass Effect (if the iPad is ever powerful enough to play such games), then don't buy it and be happy with Mass Effect Infiltrator. These are the same people who probably said, you don't need a retina display on the iPad; it is perfect the way it is. I look forward to the day when I can buy an iPad and not have to also buy a game system. No need for Air Play, just an HDMI cable.
  • Reply 47 of 56
    hezetationhezetation Posts: 674member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by paxman View Post


    I am not a gamer but it strikes me that when your eyes are on the television screen or computer monitor, an iPhone or iPad is not the ideal type of game controller.



    I predict that Nintendo will eventually dwindle down to nothing more than a game title company & will then port those titles to other platforms like iOS. Sony is much more likely to hang on to their strategy until it stops working & then sell off their gaming division to some other company. If Apple's smart they'll snag it so Microsoft doesn't.



    Wild predictions I know but we shall see.
  • Reply 48 of 56
    It is a hassle using the iPhone or iPod touch as one can feel the virtual buttons.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by charlituna View Post


    Apple has never done anything due to 'pressure' from another company. If they do this it will be because they see value in it. Not because someone else did it and they want to compete. same with a 5-7 inch something, same with an actual TV set etc.







    Puns intended I'm sure.







    I still say this. If not the iPad then the iphone/touch.



    Airplay lets you send any app to the Apple TV and developers can code special modes for when you are using Airplay that send part of the screen only. Like Real Racing HD does. There's already apps that allow you to use your iPhone as a controller with an iPad. One of the is called something like The Incident. I saw it at an Apple store on their demo iPads and iPhones over the holidays. People talk about how we must have a joystick etc but do we. Temple Run and Monster Dash do just fine with their flicks and taps and you don't have to look at the screen to do them correctly. Its all in the coding



  • Reply 49 of 56
    prof. peabodyprof. peabody Posts: 2,860member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz View Post


    Got any evidence that the category is not growing? Are you backpedaling now?



    Astute readers will notice that I never claimed the category is not growing...



    It's not hard to understand my argument. Basically .... the entire gaming market is booming like never before. "Hard Core" (shooter games) are growing only slightly (at a rate far below the adoption of things like Angry Birds etc.)



    Thus the category of "hard core" (shooting) games or the market for them is fading. They are taking up an increasingly shrinking percentage of overall gaming time. They are games that are interesting to an increasingly smaller percentage of the gaming market as a whole.



    Now I know that no one cares or will listen to this argument, because 95% of the people on the forum are juvenile males who like gaming, but ...



    The perception of these kind of games as being "the real market" or "the hard core market," or "the real deal," or "what gaming is all about" or any of those other erroneous platitudes, is clearly false and getting more so day by day.



    What I'm saying is that "gaming" comprises a lot more than is dreamt of in your philosophy.
  • Reply 50 of 56
    ljocampoljocampo Posts: 657member
    I believe when Apple has perfected all the pieces to their gaming strategy, they will come of their corner with a knockout punch. Apple has been courting gaming executives and developers. Apple is moving ahead with it's roll out of Bluetooth 4.0 and Airplay. It won't be long when Apple wows everyone when they actually do show their hand. It's my guess that a Bluetooth 4.0 controller and Airplay is the last ingredient that glues their game plan together. I hope I'm right.



    The only thing Sony or Nintendo can do at that point to save their shareholders profit is to give all the shareholders Apple stock and tell them to hold on to it for a few years. That or hire an army of ninjas to attack One Infinite Loop.
  • Reply 51 of 56
    ljocampoljocampo Posts: 657member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Blastdoor View Post


    That's pretty much the only way it makes sense to me, because if you're using the iPad as the screen then I think it would become rather cumbersome to have to hold both the iPad and the game controller, or to have the game controller connected to the iPad.



    I guess you could put the iPad on a stand and treat it like a mini-TV, but that seems contrary to what an iPad is designed to be (aka, a mobile device).



    I disagree the iPad is a mobile device such as a iPhone or iPod Touch. Most use the iPad at home. A separate controller and iPad stand could work if you didn't want to use your HDTV. And there are some really nice add-on controllers out there for the touch that can handle all but the most serious handheld gamers.



    I really don't see Apple pulling out all the punches on gaming until they are ready to sell their Apple television, which will cost enough to include the game controllers with the set. And I believe Apple won't fully court the mobile handheld gamer yet and allow third parties to continue selling their attachable controllers (OTOH they could make a mobile type controller too), but they probably will support third party controllers within iOS and maybe even a mUSB port.
  • Reply 52 of 56
    ljocampoljocampo Posts: 657member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by paxman View Post


    I am not a gamer but it strikes me that when your eyes are on the television screen or computer monitor, an iPhone or iPad is not the ideal type of game controller.



    On a television or monitor yes the screens are large but I doubt it would matter. I don't know but touch typist don't have to look at the keyboard so I figure neither will a gamer have to look at virtual buttons on an iDevice as a controller. The big screen gamers will get normal controllers probably made by Apple.



    For mobile gamers this is probably a moot issue because their peripheral vision on such a small screen will keep the controls within easy view, as they do now.



    In any case, I bet if you asked gamers did they actually need the feel of the keys on their controllers to play the game, most would say no not really. Those who say they do are probably reflecting their bias or despise of change, not their dexterity. Besides, a selling point for virtual controllers is they can be customizable to the individual through software. A big plus for developers because most drivers already exist.
  • Reply 53 of 56
    I don't believe this BS. Games have quickly evolved to be controlled by touch, sensors, etc. and we see that in all popular games such as Angry Bird, Plant vs. Zombies, Cut the Rope. Even great action games like Infinity Blade, FPS like Modern Warfare, and RPG like Final Fantasy have been optimized to be controlled by touch. Even if a controller was available, it wouldn't be compatible with the majority of the games available today.



    If this rumor is true, I don't think it will be for iOS games. My theory...I think Apple might have bigger plans and introduce their upcoming Apple TV as an all-in-one TV + game console + PC. This makes more sense to me.
  • Reply 54 of 56
    shadowxprshadowxpr Posts: 162member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by capoeira4u View Post


    I don't believe this BS. Games have quickly evolved to be controlled by touch, sensors, etc. and we see that in all popular games such as Angry Bird, Plant vs. Zombies, Cut the Rope. Even great action games like Infinity Blade, FPS like Modern Warfare, and RPG like Final Fantasy have been optimized to be controlled by touch. Even if a controller was available, it wouldn't be compatible with the majority of the games available today.



    If this rumor is true, I don't think it will be for iOS games. My theory...I think Apple might have bigger plans and introduce their upcoming Apple TV as an all-in-one TV + game console + PC. This makes more sense to me.



    For great gaming experience in AAA titles a physical controller is the way to go. Touch will never give you the quick input response of a physical controller...
  • Reply 55 of 56


    There are, actually, enough gaming controllers for the iPad, check out this article. They might not look all gorgeous and the arcade clients will only let you play a few games, but still, there are enough to offer you a better gaming experience. 

  • Reply 56 of 56


    I wonder how the system will check the content and delete it? Or it will just block everything on iPad?

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