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Apple Has No Plans for Dedicated iOS Gaming Controller

Power to the user !

A physical keyboard is to typing what a gamepad is to gaming, no more, no less !

Native support for both, touch & physical interfaces must be implemented seamlessly ! That choice should be given entirely to the user needs so it can enhance the experience not cripple it as it is doing now in iOS devices.

You just have to be a non gamer to push an interface in a fashion that is so ineffective for gaming.

There could be even complementation between both interfaces in order to give the best user-game interaction.

At the end no matter how stubborn apple is, if they are to integrate gaming console functionality into their devices they must support gamepads, its a matter of how much time they are willing to waste and make their users suffer before they realize that fact :)
 
charlituna said:
Nope, because they started with a tablet and later decided to do phone first

What Steve said no to was a '7 inch tablet', which Apple still hasn't made (cause they made an 8 instead)
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Actually just read it in his Biography. Jobs officially told people that Apple had no plans to make a tablet. He told this to people when the idea was already in his head for quite a while and was first entering the "prototype stage." I want to say around 2004 he said this?

What pushed him to want to start testing it out was someone who worked for MS kept bragging to Jobs about the Tablet and how it was changing everything up. Jobs finally got tired of hearing about how it was great and he thought it was a POS because it had a stylus.

So yes Apple did officially tell people they had no plans to work on a tablet while they had already just started working on a secret prototype.

Also just read in his biography that Jobs was asked in an interview about cell phones. Jobs said this was one area that Apple would not enter because it required partners and that was something Apple didn't like to do. That ended up to be pretty much wrong. Apple did try to partner with Motorola (I think it was them) first but saw how much of a POS it was. So Jobs said "I'm done with these stupid companies. Let's make a phone on our own!"

So that is basically "two" things Jobs himself denied. I'm sure their are others from earlier in his career that I am forgetting about.
 
Weegee1 said:
You can't play something like Super Mario Bros on an iPhone and expect precision. Platform jumpers and shooters that aren't that "serious" would work well on an iPad if it were to have a controller. Every good Nintendo portable game uses buttons.
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If you shooters, you mean bullet hell shoot-em-up type games, I suggest you try the Raiden Legacy on the iPad. It works brilliantly with touch controls.

But for platformers, I agree with you. They require a different kind of precision that isn't easily replicated with with a touchscreen.
 
komodrone said:
Judging from typical Apple trends, It'll probably be a one button controller anyways if it did ever happen.
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I can only recall one product line that Apple included retardly few buttons for - their mice prior to the might mouse. Is there some other product I'm not remembering right now, possibly something they've sold within the past 5 years?
 
Maybe not a dedicated controller, but I do believe that an app store will come to the TV eventually. Gaming will come :).
 
Unfortunate

I'd like to have an Apple game console with a dedicated controller. But it seems Apple is run by a bunch of petrified dinosaurs that won't develop products not meeting their limited field of vision. Truth is these guys that run Apple have gotten so many things wrong lately. All they do is sit on their cash hoard without chasing new ideas. Tim Cook is showing he is an old, unimaginative executive sitting farting dust.

Dude make a move. Be daring. At least take and implement some ideas from the Apple Community. You can make a microscopically thin 4 inch phone, but what's the fun in doing just that. Take a risk...
 
Patriot24 said:
Yes. I'm not sure if you're new to the ballgame here, but Apple regularly "leaks" information to trusted journalists. Walt Mossberg, David Pogue, and a few others are seeded these little nuggets of info to get the excitement rolling.

To the masses, Apple has an image of secrecy. To anyone that follows closely, they are actually quite loose with details when they want to be. It is all part of the PR/Marketing game.
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And what a genius game it is. Apple has done an excellent job at controlling product leaks. I'd go so far as to say that they likely allow the images of parts coming from Foxconn employees leading up to product announcements. It's a great way to build buzz for a product before announcing it.
 
I much prefer physical controls over touch controls, but I wouldn't have gone for this. Aside from the control issue it's all about the games, and the big hitters on 3DS and Vita (and their predecessors) knock the ball out of the park.
 
It seems a pretty weak rumour in the first place; it just doesn't really make sense for Apple to bother as most people are happy just using touch, especially since a controller is just something extra to carry around or that you can only use at home.


Now, an app for iOS that could turn it into a gaming controller, maybe for controlling an Apple TV…
 
haravikk said:
It seems a pretty weak rumour in the first place; it just doesn't really make sense for Apple to bother as most people are happy just using touch, especially since a controller is just something extra to carry around or that you can only use at home.


Now, an app for iOS that could turn it into a gaming controller, maybe for controlling an Apple TV…
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Happy? Eh, there are certainly plenty of games that work well with touch... mainly genres that were designed for it in the first place... but there are also plenty that don't. FPS/TPS and platformers particularly suffer from the lack of physical controls. The former because without shoulder buttons you can't perform more than two actions at the same time, the latter because only a physical d-pad can reliably register the slight twitches of the thumb needed for precise jumping.

The idea of using an iOS device as a game controller for the AppleTV has a major flaw in it: without tactile feedback it's hard to keep your fingers on the proper controls when you're not looking at them.
 
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Weegee1 said:
But it's not uniform and not built into the system, if I am correct. That is, Apple doesn't really support it but allow it. The apps talk directly to the controllers with no real standard, right?
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The official PS3 controller works out of the box wirelessly via Bluetooth. It sends axes and button identifiers the same way every time on every computer. It's as uniform as it gets.
 
Swordylove said:
I don't get people would want gaming controller for tablets and smartphones. If you're that 'serious' in gaming, go get a console, a laptop, or a desktop. Using gaming controller for tablets/smartphones are just ridiculous (except for the built-in ones like Xperia Play).

If Apple wants to make one, it makes more sense to make for the Macs first (or one that is compatible for both Macs and iOS).
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You can have it both ways... IThingy for casual gaming, xbox os ps for " real" gaming... I can't imagine playing Arkham City on iPad as I wouldn't play Angry Birds on xbox... I think these games are available on both platform, but it isn't the same experience, imho

Things will converge one day, probably sooner rather than later... But for serious gaming, you need hard buttons. No time for checking your fingers while you're busy being Batman!
 
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