QUOTE
Strong claim to Revolution controller
It works like a motorbike apparently – Read on…
23rd Aug 2005
Computer Games Magazine has claimed the scoop on what Nintendo’s Revolution controller actually is and the result is, well, not a teleportation device or a waffle iron, that’s for sure.
Apparently, it’s a couple of spinning widgets inside a traditional pad that spin so fast they cause rotational resistance. Kind of, well, kind of boring if true…
The magazine reads:
It's revolutionary in the same two senses that controller rumble is/was revolutionary: first, it's kind of actually not a huge deal, but controllers will eventually all have it because it is pretty neat; and second, it involves revolving. Simply, the Revolution controller will provide resistance to being tilted. No doubt this is done by some application of a tilt sensor such as the one in WarioWare: Twisted combined with rumble technology.
After all, rumble is just done by some off-balance widgets inside the controller spinning really fast. If they were balanced, they could provide enough rotational inertia— the same thing that makes bikes and motorcycles harder to tilt the faster they're going— to perform this trick.
The "could" is why Nintendo hasn't come out with it yet. Yeah, they say they don't want it to be copied, which is valid because I'm sure it will be, just not anytime soon. What's really happening is Nintendo is trying to make this work with wireless controllers, finding the optimal trade-off between spinning the widgets fast enough to produce a good, strong effect and keeping the controller from eating batteries too quickly. Oh, and it has to be cheap and reliable, too.
Why this isn't just another Revolution rumour: I'm hurt, I really am. You think I would do that to you? Well, even if you don't believe me this time, I'm betting you will in the future. So there.
So you can make of that what you will. Nintendo, of course, isn’t going to comment and remember, there’s not that long to wait. Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo said, “We plan to give details on when we will launch it, what the price will be, what the controller will look like and how games can be played on it by the end of the year.”
For those of you that don't understand the kind of resistance they're talking about, go get yourself a power drill, pull the trigger, and rotate the drill opposite the spin direction. It'll seem like its pushing back against you, until you reach a certain degree, at which the resistance stops.
It turns out Revolution is a play on words to what they were really doing, which kind of blows. But then again this is from Computer Games Magazine which I never heard of before so I'm not sure if it's reliable. I personally think this is just stupid, what can this be used for? How can it change gaming? Maybe Arm Wreslting games will be the rave but I highly doubt that. I really hope there's something else on this controller and it doesn't burn out battieres in a few hours.