Introducing the PSP Lite! ... I mean Slim...

[Korenshei]

Sony in no way, shape, or form stole the Six-axis from Nintendo

Out of the 'list' of things sony has copied or stolen, Six-axis has to be one of the biggest and most blatantly obvious feats. Not that I doubt you or anything, but can you show me an article about this filed patent or the patent itself? Remember that Nintendo was working on the Wii since early 2002, so if this patent was filed later than that, I'd consider that a bit suspicious.

Sony's Six-axis was the realization of a patent they had long before the Wiimote ever was showcased.

It makes me question Sony's having this idea in the first place. Sure they may of thought about it before Nintendo unveiled the at the time Revolution controller, but they did'nt unveil it or even hint at it until E3, 8 whole months later. And whatever happened to that boomerang controller? It was there for a very long time, and there was no mention of motion sensing for all that time. Yes, it was a prototype, but then Sony decided to unveil the "new" controller.

What's really suspicious about the whole thing is that it's basically a PS2 controller with a button in the middle and motion sensing. That's all they changed. It's like doing a last minute project, if you were told to re-do an essay that your teacher said needed a different style, and had a considerable amount of typos, you came in the day the redone essay was due, but you only fixed a few typos and that's it. You rushed it all on the last night, could'nt think of anything, and made a jumbled up idea that was hardly different than the previous ideas for your last draft. It gives an image in my head of the Sony execs at a time very near E3, discussing what their final PS3 controller will be. They waste a lot of time, and in a hasty move, one person takes a drawing of a PS2 controller, and draws a circle in the middle. Note that even the circle is a copied idea from Microsoft's 360.

If it was the boomerang with six-axis, I'd be less prone to call out Sony for stealing an idea, but at the same time, they made no notion of having any motion sensing in their controller until E3.

Alow me to take a snippet out from the July (AKA E3) issue of Game Informer from 2006. GI's question is in bold, Kaz Hirai's answer isn't.

First of all, can you talk about when you guys put in the motion sensor for the controller and the decisions made to go with that?

I need to back a bit through history here. You know the form factor for the original Playstation controller, the one without the sticks, remember that? That's where we started. And we've seen a natural evolution in trying to really increase the man/machine interface and make it a deeper relationship with the controller... if you look at it through the timeline of how the controller for the Playstation products have evolved, I think that you can see that it's a natural progression. As opposed to a lot of people, especially in the mainstream press, they just look at it and say "was that decision based on what your competitors have done?" Nothing can be further from the truth.

HA...hA Ha HA haha ha Ha... that's just bogus. That kind of question ("was that decision based on what your competitors have done?") was something that the mainstream press wasn't even saying, it was a much nicer version of the things gamers on sites were saying, but no press was saying "Nintendo's idea--copied?"


The same went with

miis

.

This time they don't even say anything until after their machine is released. Again, there was a large amount of time in between the announcement of Nintendo's idea and Sony's. 9 months for motion sensing, 7 for avatars. Both of those are large amounts of time, just enough, for Sony to replicate these ideas.

I'll also argue that even though it's pretty Secondlife, what about the multiplayer usefulness with these avavtars in other games? That sounds very much stolen.

Sony has actually had this cocky, arrogant mood about them that they've flaunted ever since they came into the buisiness with Playstation, but it was'nt until the PS3 and PSP that so many people realised how low they are.

EDIT: Darn UM, if only you posted before I started talking here, I could've included a bit more.  :

[JordAnime]

And I don't think Sony knew about the Wiimote beforehand. Otherwise, they wouldn't have settled for an inferior, old patent they had. Think about it. Why would Sony knowingly counter with an inherently weaker product. If they were serious about winning they would have actd in a different manner. That's my take at least. Again, I'm not sure where we disagree but still... It's not too easy to get across ideas at 2:00 in the morning *yawns*

The problem is that the motion sensitivity was announced at the Tokyo Game Show well over half a year before E3 2006, prior to E3 2006, Sony still had the boomerang controller as the method of control for PS3 and had no plans for motion sensitivty.  To it was most likely thrown in a few months before E3 to steal Nintendo's thunder, the idea was to copy the concept and diminish the effect of the Wii's controller.  So in the end, they took Nintendo's idea, which was motion sensitive and tried to use it on their own system against Nintendo. 

The misnomer surrounding the six-axis is that Sony stole the motion capabilities from Nintendo's Wiimote, which was crap in and of itself

There's no misnomer, Nintendo announces a controller that uses motion sensitive, then Sony does a few months later in a pretty pejorative manner.  We can agree that the idea was to steal Nintendo's thunder, we can agree that Sony didn't have the idea until after the Wii was announced, or at the very earliest when the concept for the Revolution system was discussed as being something radically different.  The Six-Axis isn't a direct copy of the Wii mote, it's completely inferior and it hasn't really changed any sales.  People haven't gone "well who needs a Wii when PS3 has a tilt-o-rama controller too!"  And that's for a number of reasons:

A. Price, the PS3's too expensive for the average consumer
B. The Wii remote is a lot of sophisticated and innovative than the PS3's Six Axis


Thus, the Wiimote is the selling point of the Wii and the six axis, well, isn't. 

So okay, Sony didn't infringe on any patents, didn't steal the technology, but I think they are completely guilty of incorperating a pre-existing concept from Nintendo in an attempt to garner support for PS3 and take it away from Wii.  Well, so far it's proven to be a total flop.

Let's be honest-that's not a fair statement. Nintendo is the father of the industry so to speak. All of the controllers that exist today are derived from their models. There's really no avoiding it. I really can't imagine a controller without Nintendo-esque elements. The Six-axis containing components of Nintendo's controllers is the byproduct of industry practices that have been taking place for over a decade.

Fair enough, Nintendo's controller have been the basis for every controller since the NES. 

That post opened my eyes to the fact that it was still a rumor. At the time, I thought that build had been completely confirmed via Kotaku. Needless to say, I was mistaken... as we all are at times. Right now, there's no credibility until a confirmation comes (whether it be written or the actual model at E3). That's why these reports are called "rumors". You can't buy into them too much. Again, I misinterpreted what was presented.

Well I'm glad I can do a little myth busting myself.

[ETG]

Boomerang style controller, Rumble feature, shoulder buttons, D-pad, analog control, Six-axis, Miis (they call it PS Home),  GC slogan (now the Slogan for PS Home), Multi-player usefulness w/ avatars, Nintendo DS and GBA (they call it the PSP), and Every good idea Ninty has ever come up with that I still haven't mentioned. And now we can add the DS Lite (now called PSP ) to that list.

Oh and I'll think you'll be saying now Vauxhall or Mercedes or someone *stole* the idea of an automobile from Fords? Oh Yes and the modern world *stole* the idea of a sewerage system from the Romans. We *stole* numerical figures to replace Roman Numerals from the Arabs.

It wasn't stealing. It was simpoly implenemeting new ideas, and somewhat improving thme in a Sony package. That should be taken as a complement of sorts.

[Korenshei]

It wasn't stealing. It was simpoly implenemeting new ideas, and somewhat improving thme in a Sony package. That should be taken as a complement of sorts.

Yes, it was stealing. They did'nt even improve on the ideas, they're just good at making second rate copies of things. That's a mighty excessive list of things Sony has, as you put it, "borrowed", and they just keep on doing it, which pretty much makes it stealing or copying.

If the list was'nt that big, or if ideas were taken that were'nt as big as a lot of these, I may be tempted to say it isn't stealing or copying. But the fact that Sony repeatedly takes ideas and puts them "in a Sony package" isn't just helping to "improve an idea" as you are saying they are.

Besides, they aren't implementing new ideas in the first place. Implementing a new idea would be coming up with something. Nintendo does that. Sony is taking other companies' ideas and morphing them a bit to make it look like they are coming up with original things.

[Hyruleansoldier]

This has all been terribly entertaining I must say.  But I'm not going to ride down the fanboy slander ride on this one.  You may have noticed my first post (one of the first replies) wat kinda flame baity, but it seemed to have caused this thread to develop into some fine-tuned discussions, which I can only applaud.  Sure there's been mild flaming and the like, but it could have been much worse.  So no, I wasn't offended by that bit of "hostility of the moment", and I hope others weren't either.

Now before I hand on the Torch of Knowledge, I noticed there was something which you wanted me to clear up for you:

And what HS meant by 'all the money in the world' was not because it costed a lot, because the PSP is a waste of money, and the only way he'd get it is if he had tons of money to waste.

I'll ask him what he meant. You have your interpretation of what he meant, and I have mine. Who's to say besides him?

Korenshei's interpretation, as made clear by the italics, hit the spot.  What I didn't get was what you thought I meant by that...  Surely not that I just thought the PSP 'Slim' to be expensive in itself?

And to wrap things up here, I'd like to adress the myth of "stealing". I don't get why people get so upset over it. Every company has copied at one point, even Nintendo. I for one don't see anything wrong with it. I don't care what a company went through to create a product...as long as it's good! I don't think that morals exist in big business. The only way I see people getting offended over the issue is:

A.) They feel violated based on an allegiance to a company              OR
B.) They have a strict moral code (believe morals exist in business)

Overall, whether stealing is right is a matter of opinion. Trying to use the argument in any form is really worthless, whether it be to prove that Company A is better than Company B, or simply if a new product was copied (basing on past actions-as seen here). It's a bottomless pit of opinion and morality. There's no winner or loser.

That's a very just survey of things, Uchi.  The alleged "stealing" of ideas tends to be a favoured argument to simply dismiss an innovative new game or console simply "because [to some degree] it has been done before already".  Face it, this is Postmodernism and almost everything has been done already.  Not necessarily hardware-specific as that branch is ever-growing, but y'all get the idea, right?

Furthermore, like I've discussed before elsewhere, the ancient art of copying + improving (in the Renaissance already they called this 'Imitatio et Aemulatio') ensures that nothing about a good idea gets wasted.  If only the company who'd come up with an idea would be allowed to implement it, it'd never reach its maximum potential.

So if we're going to be objective, which has time and again proven to be hard - especially if you favour one particular side - you must realise that in the end it's all for the highest possible yield of a certain branch (software/hardware).

Of course, and this is the key element to this whole "philosophy", is that you really do improve a given piece of soft- or hardware.  If not, mere copying is a dishonourable act and may be referred to as rip-off.


This turned out longer than I had anticipated but there you go.  I now hand on the torch of knowledge.

[Korenshei]

This has all been terribly entertaining I must say. but it seemed to have caused this thread to develop into some fine-tuned discussions, which I can only applaud.

That's just what I've been thinking, this is so far a very thought provoking and opinionated (in a good way) discussion.

[Ezlo's Apprentice]

This has all been terribly entertaining I must say. but it seemed to have caused this thread to develop into some fine-tuned discussions, which I can only applaud.

That's just what I've been thinking, this is so far a very thought provoking and opinionated (in a good way) discussion.

All from a Sony thread started by me? I would never have seen this coming.

[Shin Illuminated]

Well, seeing as how some of the beinning discussors in this thread decided to make a quick remark here, i might as well put in two more cents myself. Honestly, there are two things keeping me from getting a PS3:the price, and lack of a good game. So far, all they have left is MGS4...and its just not worth the $600 for that one game. I never said I wouldn't get one, I just won't get one anytime soon.

I do believe that Sony ripped off Nintendo last minute, but that just shows that Nintendo is finally doing something right again seeing as how Sony now needs to copy from someone they've pretty much been slaughtering for the better part of 10 years now.

[Korenshei]

Even though the PS1 outsold the N64, people love the N64 more than PS1, and even though they were... "slaughtering" Nintendo at the time, they were copying pretty hardcore then. Just saying...  :

[Faceless]

This thread is so sad.

[Korenshei]

In what way?

[Assault on Mind]

Meh I had a PSP and it sucked this just sounds like a big scam to me and maybe they'll jack up the price of games to make a profit. Because no matter what you say a company's goal is to always make a profit.
It is just a big rip off the Lite.

[n66monkey]

well i like my psp phat lol, i,m just going to keep that one, screw the psp lite. but i am glad i traded my phat DS for a DS lite, i love my DS lite. and man when zelda PH hits U.S., i could say possibly my favorite consule.


Wii love u Zelda games
 

now i,m going to sleep
  

lol
 

[Sheldon Cooper PhD]

Well its for real now..

1/3d of the wight and 19% slimmer.....Wow....

[Ezlo's Apprentice]

Anyone interested in a Press Release?

Available in DS Phat Silver and DS Lite White... Fanboy fodder or what?

[Korenshei]

lol... The damn thing doesn't even look different...

[TheHylianLoach]

lol... The damn thing doesn't even look different...

It looks sorta different. They should have shown a side view to see how thin it was.

[Ezlo's Apprentice]

19% sounds barely noticeable... Last I checked the original PSP was 23mm thick. 19% of 23 is 4.37. So it's now just under 2cm thick instead of just over 2cm thick...

[Korenshei]

I don't know which is more pathetic... the PSP or PS3?  :

[ZeldaMaster]

Both are, but I guess you could say the PS3 for...well just visit the PS3 thread for that one. And the PSP for not having very many good games at all. The price, and...well, I'm sure we've said enough.