Tendo City

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Yep, MS finally is attempting to fix their biggest flaw, that d-pad.

Most people seem to be skipping over one big reason they didn't just use a Nintendo d-pad before. Nintendo patented that thing decades ago. That's also why they aren't using it this time either. This "transforming" d-pad design seems to be a way to get around that. Since it's a development FROM that old design, one with it's own "advantages" (if you call being able to switch to "garbage mode" an advantage), it can be patented itself, meaning they no longer owe Nintendo anything (in patents, a derivative work is allowed so long as it is a clear, non-obvious upgrade from a previous design, which is meant to allow for innovation, though in this case it's more of a work-around).

The other big change seems to be removing the color from the buttons. How dull... how boring... How, hard to make out what button does what for newcomers playing, say, Fable 2 (which identifies the buttons purely on color). Nintendo took the color out of their buttons too of course, but I thought that was a mistake too. Face buttons SHOULD be colorful. It makes it easier to identify them, and it makes things a little nicer to look at. I argued for simplicity when splashes of annoying color were the norm, and I'm arguing for more noise now that boring and flat are the norm. Yeah, I'm aware of it, I'm just contrary I suppose, but in this case I think it's justified. I like my red, blue, green, and yellow. I guess it's just the ol' Super Nintendo/Famicom logo there speaking up (I used an Ascii pad back in dem days, so that's the pattern I'm used to, and it matched up so well with the SNES "logo" used very rarely like in Mario World's "Special Zone".

Anyway, assuming this really DOES make the d-pad nice to use, they should just start packing it with the remodeled 360 from here on out.

+ Hopefully a better d-pad

- $65 (Expensive!)
- Grey face buttons

Quote:Most people seem to be skipping over one big reason they didn't just use a Nintendo d-pad before. Nintendo patented that thing decades ago. That's also why they aren't using it this time either. This "transforming" d-pad design seems to be a way to get around that.

True, but Nintendo obviously didn't patent every form of the crosspad -- remember the Dreamcast controller? I'd think MS could have come up with something... really though, circular d-pads can be just as good as crosspads. The problem isn't the shape, it is the pad -- the Genesis, Saturn, Xbox, and many PC gamepads (Microsoft's Sidewinder line, Saitek, etc.) have quite good round d-pads.

Quote:How, hard to make out what button does what for newcomers playing, say, Fable 2 (which identifies the buttons purely on color)

Really? Yeah, that would get difficult. Great design there Microsoft.

I remember the dreamcast controller. I remember the d-pad on it sucked too. In fact I'd rank it worse than the 360 d-pad. You're right that the shape isn't really the issue, it's the underlying design. Nintendo d-pads are just a chunk of plastic over standard rubber contacts. It's simple, elegant, and works great. However it's patented, so if you look at Sega's design for example, they put a ball bearing in the very center to "balance" the d-pad around. Otherwise it's more or less the same, but different enough they can't be sued. The shape is another matter, I never really cared if it was circular or cross shaped. The Sony d-pad is more or less a d-pad but to make it different enough, they had the plastic "cross" dive under the face of the controller right in the middle, ostensibly a new way to "hold the pad in place" but it accomplishes the design goal of having an addition to the design to avoid patent issues.

Both Sega and Sony's solutions do well enough. I no longer have a Sidewinder (I gave mine away ever since I found newer sound cards no longer had "Game Ports" on them, and never bothered getting a USB version), but I think that one used the same "balanced on a ball bearing" design as the Genesis. That design seems to have been inherited on the Saturn and the Dreamcast, but in the case of the Dreamcast it's so exxagerated that it's downright awkward. I found removing the ball bearing does wonders for "fixing" that design flaw.

The XBox and 360 have their own way around the patent issue. The d-pad doesn't rest directly on top of the rubber contacts. Rather, the part you manually adjust narrows down to a cylinder which descends into the face plate of the controller, where it then widens out into another d-pad-shaped portion which itself rests on top of the rubber contacts. I suppose the argument for patent lawyers would probably be something about protection from dust and spills. Anyway, it's different enough to avoid patent issues, but it presents it's own problems. It would probably work well enough, as it did on the two XBox original controller designs, but it is again "taller" than it needs to be, combined with a very narrow "pit" where the d-pad rests which causes it to hit the sides during use. Others have gone over more details as to where the flaws are.

Anyway, ideally this new "patent avoiding" design means they can scrap the "outer d-pad linked to inner d-pad" model entirely and just go for a direct overlay, just with the "circle to cross" shape adjustment worked in.

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/...touch.aspx

So here's one review, from one of the more MS-biased reviewers out there, but it's interesting at least. While I disagree with his comment on it being silver (silver ALWAYS look gooooood), I'm pretty much agreed about the rest. It's silly. (I will say that he's severely misrepresenting the XBox division. Their software on the system is excellent, from the online system to the interface to everything else. It's in hardware where it all falls apart, from their weird proprietary addon design (like memory cards and hard drives) to that rushed main board that overheated (he fails to mention that problem was eliminated a few revisions ago).)

The Dreamcast's d-pad is perfectly decent. Not as good as the SNES, Genesis 6-button, Saturn, or N64 Dpads, sure, but still, it's good. Better than the Playstation controller's dpad of course, though that doesn't take much, and better than the GC ones as well. About even with the Xbox really, both have good dpads that are a little small, so they aren't quite as good as the ones I listed above, but still are quite solid pads.

Still, it is too bad that the DC had a downgrade in buttons (the removal of C and Z, which really were needed considering the DC has too few buttons) and dpad (size, quality, feel) from the Saturn 3D Controller, why did you do that, Sega? But yeah, it's not bad.

Eh I disagree there. I found the Dreamcast d-pad way too "wobbly" and hard to really know where I was pointing. The center part just stuck up too much. Didn't like it, not one bit. The Playstation d-pads on the other hand were always perfectly responsive to me. Are they as good as a solid Nintendo d-pad? Nope, but they're certainly better than a lot of alternatives, at least to me. The Gamecube d-pad was... too small and in a bad position. It's exactly the same as the one on the GBA (first model) near as I can tell, and there it was just fine, but on the Gamecube controller, it was more awkward. Aside from those issues though, it's still responsive and easy to tell where you're pressing. There's certainly worse, and personally I put the Dreamcast d-pad lower on the list. I just never liked that one. I will say with a little work it could have been as good as the N64 d-pad. However, that just opens up another disagreement, where I think the Gamecube analog stick is one of the very best there is, and the N64 as one of the worst.