Previously, I worked for Mad Catz (the largest third party peripheral distributor) as the Xbox product manager, when the OG Xbox was launching. Back then Mad Catz was trying to work with MS for support of the Panther series controller, which featured a trackball. I actually flew up to Redmond and pitched the value of a position based control versus rate based. They were not convinced, and because of their lack of support, all MS games are based on rate based controls (ie analog). Analog controls operate on 256 levels in each direction. At the maximum 256 value, the game specifies a maximum "rate" at which a player will turn. Without MS support, Mad Catz engineers had to create an algorithm to simulate the rate based control as position based. Position based controls are optimal for FPS games because the rate of turn is not set to a maximum, rather it is based on the position of the mouse cursor (meaning you can turn around on a dime). Unfortunatley, the algorithms that convert rate based to position based controls still lack the true position based feel (as of 2001, when we last tested the algorithm). Mad Catz ended up abandoning the product because it would not have met consumer's expectations. My hat is off to XCM if they pulled it off, but I will tell you that it is very, VERY unlikely that this system will truly simulate true positioned based control. Here's to hoping...
Hori supplies Wii with fighting stick
Jun 26th 2007 6:25PM (Joystiq)Team Xtender's XFPS 360 in action
Jan 9th 2007 8:57PM (Engadget)