In Immersion's lawsuit, that is.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/28/...21137.html
Quote:Dual Shocked: Sony Immersed in $90.7 million fine, injunction
US District Court favors San Jose tech company Immersion; Sony injunction to halt American sales of PS2s and affected materials.
Three years ago, Northern California technology company Immersion Corporation brought a suit against Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft Corporation claiming patent infringement of its proprietary technology used in the controllers for the companies' home consoles: the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and Xbox.
Microsoft settled out of court with Immersion in 2003, avoiding messy legal proceedings for $26 million, which also got Microsoft a 10 percent stake in Immersion.
Sony, on the other hand, left the decision up to the courts, a move that appears to have cost the company a serious chunk of change. Last Thursday, United States District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered the electronics giant to pay Immersion $90.7 million in patent infringement damages. The fine stems from the $82 million awarded to Immersion by a jury's decision on September 21, 2004, plus prejudgement interest of $8.7 million tacked on last week, which Sony unsuccessfully objected to.
The tiff involves Immersion's technology that creates the "rumble" feature that causes controllers to vibrate in sync with events in games. The court found in favor of Immersion's claims that Sony's Dual Shock controllers, the standard sticks for Sony's PlayStation and PlayStation 2, and several of its games infringe on two of its patents.
The Oakland, California, court also ordered an injunction stating that Sony is to immediately stop selling the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, both versions of the Dual Shock controllers, and 47 games found to use the vibration technology, including Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Gran Turismo 3. The injunction only effects sales in the United States.
Sony immediately appealed the decision and has been granted a stay of permanent injunction, allowing Sony to sell its products as normal during the appeals process. However, Sony will have to pay a licensing fee to Immersion for the duration of the stay.
By Tim Surette -- GameSpot
POSTED: 03/28/05 11:14 AM PST
Full title list here. Though of course with the stay they haven't been forced to stop selling them yet, and it could be a while, if it ever actually happens...
http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q1-2005/032705a.html
Quote:# A Bug's Life
# Amplitude
# Ape Escape
# Atlantis: The Lost Empire
# Bloody Roar 2
# Cool Boarders 3
# Cool Boarders 4
# Cool Boarders 2001
# Crash Bash
# Crash Team Racing
# Drakan: The Ancients' Gate
# Emperor's New Groove
# Extermination
# FantaVision
# Final Fantasy X
# Formula One 2001
# The Getaway
# Gran Turismo
# Gran Turismo 2
# Gran Turismo 3
# Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
# Grand Theft Auto 3
# Grind Session
# ICO
# Jak & Daxter
# Kinetica
# Kingdom Hearts
# Legend of Dragoon
# The Mark of Kri
# Medal of Honor Frontline
# Medievil 2
# Metal Gear Solid 2
# Monster's, Inc.
# Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus
# SOCOM Navy Seals
# Speed Punks
# Spyro: Ripto's Rage
# Spyro: Year of the Dragon
# Stuart Little 2
# Syphon Filter 2
# Syphon Filter 3
# Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
# Twisted Metal: Black
# Twisted Metal 4
# Twisted Metal: Small Brawl
# Treasure Planet
# War of the Monsters.
Who wants to bet Sony tries to settle? :)
Haha, losers! *still a Nintendo fanboy at heart*
Yup! :D
I wonder about Nintendo... did they liscence it or something? Or have a settlement years back? Otherwise I'm sure they'd have been sued too...
Maybe Nintendo used their own technology that differs in some way from Immersions, it isn't very specific about what Immersion had copyrighted.
Quote:The case revolves around US patents 6,275,213 and 6,424,333 which cover "haptic feedback," which entails the use of computer-controlled vibrating motors to provide tactile feedback to the user of a program.
... doesn't help much, really...
Immersion Corporation patented force feedback: controllers which move in reaction to some kind of signals sent by the software. The main original uses were force-feedback joysticks and force-feedback racing wheels -- that'd move against you to make it a more realistic experience. Their case here is obviously that rumble controllers are close enough to that to infringe, and the courts agree...
And GR, you do know that this will hurt you, right? Since you are a PS2 owner.
Quote:And GR, you do know that this will hurt you, right? Since you are a PS2 owner.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean that I can't chuckle at Sony's misfortunes once in a while.
Immersion was clearly first to do rumble, and they patented it. Microsoft and Nintendo clearly realized that and dealt with it, but Sony... oh no... and they lost. Badly, if even just part of this decision holds...
Wow.
One up for the little guys.
I read about this a while back...
Nintendo has NOT done that. In fact, this company has sued Microsoft over the same thing. The difference is Microsoft actually made a liscense deal shortly after and now have a powerful ally. MS is going to make MORE money from their usage of this. Sony will LOSE money.
Nintendo is probably next, but since they have their hands full with Sony, they probably are biding their time. I say probably because I never did find out if Nintendo made a deal with them.
I will say this, if they sue Nintendo and Nintendo ends up pulling a patent out of their arse from 1980 or something... What does that do to Sony and Microsoft? :D
If they were going to sue Nintendo, I think they would have already.
Not if they had their lawyers busy with one company at a time.
But our little hypothesis...es... aside, the point is we just don't know what is going on with Nintendo. Anything any of us says is worthless. We are not ALLOWED to have an opinion on what is going on with Nintendo because we are in the dark.
So, it's time to do a net search. Spread out! GR, you hit google! DJ, you also hit google! ABF and OB1, take the bridge! Go!
Damn, dude... that's rough.
I'm still a Nintendo fanboy at heart too though. We'll probably all end up owning XBoxes in the future, when Nintendo goes third party for Microsoft and Sony falls down the same path that Nintendo did a decade ago. All the third parties will begin producing for Microsoft and Sony will have nothing. The only thing Nintendo has going for it is strong first and second party gaming. (Though with Rare gone, their second party gaming isn't quite as strong.) Sony doesn't have strong first or second party support, so... they'll probably have to go back to basic electronics.
And look what I found.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=2169
From the first time Sony lost this case last September (at the previous court level -- this ruling reaffirmed that one)... no definitive answer, but some ideas about why they didn't sue Nintendo.
Quote:Oddly enough, Nintendo was never named in the suit, even though they have rumble technology in their GameCube controllers, and are not openly named as a licensee of Immersion's patents. This could stem to some agreement between Nintendo and Immersion, because Nintendo had patented the Rumble Pack for the Nintendo 64 a year before Immersion was granted their patent. One theory is that should Immersion try to sue Nintendo on the issue, Nintendo could pull their trump card of a previous patent against Immersion and force Immersion to lose their patent. Either that, or somehow Nintendo's GameCube controller uses their own technology that stems from their Rumble Pack patent, and thus would not infringe upon Immersion's patents.
Sounds reasonable...
Nintendo = Teh smarts
Quote:Sony doesn't have strong first or second party support, so... they'll probably have to go back to basic electronics.
I don't know about second party support, but Sony's first party studios are a lot better than they used to be. Just look at ICO, amazing game, and it's sequel [or whatever] looks like its going to be pretty cool too. I'm sure OB1 can post a better list than that.
Sony had some first party stuff going on early in the PSX's life, but eventually they went completely third party. They no longer have as strong a grip on the third parties as they used to, so I'd imagine they'd be strengthening their first party support recently. I don't know for sure though, I haven't been keeping up lately.
Sony's 1st and 2nd party showings this generation has been nothing short of amazing. A few disappointments, and a few overrated/underrated games, but on the whole, they have an absolute slew of great/above average games. They never went completely 3rd party, they've just been going from strength to strength.
3rd Party support is still incredibly strong. Your predictions of the future don't seem particularly sound to me.
I could be very wrong, as I often am. As I said before, I haven't really been keeping up lately.
Quote:Nintendo = Teh smarts
Yup...
Quote:I don't know about second party support, but Sony's first party studios are a lot better than they used to be. Just look at ICO, amazing game, and it's sequel [or whatever] looks like its going to be pretty cool too. I'm sure OB1 can post a better list than that.
First-party Sony does seem to be improving, but they still rely mostly on third parties, unlike Nintendo... and most of what they do is more conventional than Nintendo's work. :)
*puts on flame-retardent suit* It's only a matter of time before OB1 sees this thread.
I said "Most", GR. Ico is an exception. :)
It's a spinning off-center weight. It's not like they could really come up with that patent being different than this Immersion version. The only real difference is Nintendo's is plugged into the controller. The question is this. Is the rumble pak patented for both "an add-on adding this ability" and just "a device that makes the controller shaka shaka"? If so, I think Nintendo is in a position where they could easily sue Immersion, and Immersion couldn't do a single thing about it.
Who knows? Maybe Nintendo is being a GENIUS and just waiting for this case to be over. If Sony wins, Nintendo does nothing, and loses nothing. If Sony loses, then Nintendo sues Immersion and wins THAT case, and then everything that was GOING to go to Immersion goes to Nintendo. Also, the deal with Immersion will be broken and Microsoft will come crawling to Nintendo to make a deal with THEM instead. Finally, Nintendo goes after the miriad of hardware designers with shaky motor tech in various PC controllers, and boom.
My diety... It's... it's brilliant! The... the perfect plan!
At the very least, the wait and see approach is a sure thing for Nintendo. It's NINTENDO.
Rumble and force feedback are different. I doubt that Nintendo's patent, just about rumble, would also give it control over force feedback... but maybe they could hurt Immersion over rumble, so them coming to some kind of agreement would make sense. As that article says, maybe they already have.
David slays Goliath again. A big victory and a big loss for Sony. If they weren't a multi-billion dollar corporation, this could be bad news.
As for stopping selling of just about EVERYTHING, I don't see that happening. Even if it costs them another 90 million, they're not going to stop selling their stuff because of some whiny who-the-hell-are-they company.
I'm not talking about something like TRUE force feedback, where it actually gives resistance to the stick while you are struggling with like flight controls. I'm not talking about it because, and you probably weren't aware of this, the PS2 controller doesn't have that. The PS2 controller has the exact same "force feedback" as Nintendo. That is, shaking controller technology. It's done the same way too. I know because I'm a curious person with a screwdriver :D (and in the case of the Rumble Pak, a special "bit" for unscrewing that). Well, okay actually the PS2 controller has one thing that Nintendo and Microsoft don't have. Sony, being the innovators that give you two things because it's better that way :D, put two motors into their controllers instead of one. A big one, and a small one.
Quote:As for stopping selling of just about EVERYTHING, I don't see that happening. Even if it costs them another 90 million, they're not going to stop selling their stuff because of some whiny who-the-hell-are-they company.
I've heard of Immersion before, many times, but that's because I've been following PC gaming for years, and the first force-feedback controllers were a mildly big deal.
DJ: Sounded like you were talking in general and not just about rumble... but in that case, perhaps. Who knows, that case could get messy... it's less clearcut than this one is, I think.
I was under the impression that this entire lawsuit was over the controller shaking type of force feedback, since that's the only thing Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's XBox controllers are capable of.
Sony's first party stuff has been terrific this gen. Mark of Kri, the Jak games, the R&C games, the Sly Cooper games, Gran Turismo, ICO, and several others. Who knew that the PS2 was going to be the best system for platformers, eh? I still stand by my opinion that Mario Sunshine is the best platformer this gen, but that's pretty much all that there is for the cube.
Yeah, Sony has been doing great with the firsten partier games. I don't like... HAVE any except Ico mind you... But I would like to eventually.
Quote:I was under the impression that this entire lawsuit was over the controller shaking type of force feedback, since that's the only thing Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's XBox controllers are capable of.
True, but you said something about Nintendo defeating Immersion's patents, and they apply more to force-feedback than they do to rumble, I think... though obviously they cover rumble too.
I was talking about one specific patent really, but I guess I can see the confusion. No, I really only meant Nintendo could take that one specific patent away from them, but that would be enough to really screw with both Sony and MS in the ways I suggested.... wouldn't it?
Perhaps, yes... it really depends on the particulars of the patents and how they compare to the designs of the possibly infringing products.