It's an electric motor spinning a lopsided piece of metal. Primitive caveman "tech" that was known about before that company existed. They're a patent troll.
An idea is not a technology. Making a controller vibrate to give the player or user feedback is an idea. Filing a patent on an idea is called patent trolling and should be heavily punished.
I think the haptic feedback of the PS5 DualSense when it’s well implemented adds to the experience. Returnal is a good a example. Also the Astro game that comes bundled with the console.
No game has made we want to smash my controller more than Returnal. I played it for about a week before I finally gave up. I think it’s the only game since 1980 that I’ve ever quit out of frustration.
It’s one of those games where dying takes you way, way back. When the game is well balanced, I don’t mind, but this one is pretty easy as you go along and then the boss is so much more difficult than anything before. So you die and start over and do it again and again. But because the initial part of the game is pretty easy, you don’t really get much better in the lead up to the first boss.
Normally developers include accessibility controls to make the game enjoyable for everybody, but the Returnal developers didn’t. They want you to play their way, or not at all. I ended up choosing the latter. They got my money though, so I suppose in the end, they won.
While Valve’s hardware uses a different form of rumble than the ones that Sony and co. got sued for back in the day — linear resonant actuators (LRA), rather than an eccentrically swinging weight on a shaft — that didn’t stop Nintendo from signing an agreement with Immersion to bring its technology to the Switch, which uses LRAs as well. So does Sony’s DualSense, for that matter.
immersion didn't invent LRAs. their claim is that the use of LRAs vs swinging weights is irrelevant; that any vibration haptics via any means would constitute a patent infringement.
in most games, sure, but some games really benefit from rumble and some experiences might only work properly with rumble.
ex. 1: Global game jam game where one player has to only use rumble to achieve thier goal, the dev then went to make games for blind people, and rumble is still very much part of them. It definitely feels gimmicky but it kinda opened my eye to the fact that people perceive different parts of games in different ways, depending on their disabilities
ex 2: in Beat saber, rumble tells you when your controller hits something, it becomes such an important part of the experience that when my index controllers lost rumble I had to quit playing. Without being able to watch everywhere at all times, the haptic feedback becomes vital to knowing if you hit that note you were aiming for while focusing elsewhere.
Yay, bring on the patent trolls! I wonder what's so different between vibration in a controller and vibration in a phone that prevents them from suing Apple, Samsung, Google et al.? Because if the patents are just about the idea of giving haptic feedback to players via the controller, I'm asking myself why all the billion-$ companies involved preferred to roll over and license the "technology" rather than actually going to court and trying to get the patents invalidated instead...
Specially when the prior art is old and even more modern examples are from 1997. Maybe they just fear the small chance that the sales will be stopped for a period.
Whilst this is purely speculation on my part, I have always assumed the reason they settle rather than go to court is because they don't actually want the patents invalidated. The patents serve as a barrier to entry into the market. Had Microsoft - for instance - gone to court, and had the patents invalidated, Valve would not have been sued now.
This discourages competition from smaller outlets, and thus allows the big players fewer competitors. Though, again, pure speculation on my part.
Also, could someone like Microsoft or Sony point this company to sue the aftermarket manufactures for controllers for their products. Thus selling more first party stuff.
Big players don't have to be malicious in this particular case. There are other financial incentives for big players not to go to court. For once because patent troll might block sales of particular device / service during litigation. Also because in a big companies such decisions are taken by their own legal departments that might have skewed interests and KPIs.
I think it also promotes a culture of "bullshit patents are good, just pay up and move on." Which aligns very well with large companies' large bullshit patent portfolios.
> Whilst this is purely speculation on my part, I have always assumed the reason they settle rather than go to court is because they don't actually want the patents invalidated. The patents serve as a barrier to entry into the market. Had Microsoft - for instance - gone to court, and had the patents invalidated, Valve would not have been sued now.
And importantly, they don't want their own patents invalidated. They don't want legal precedents that weaken their own IP rights.
Yay, bring on the patent trolls! I wonder what's so different between vibration in a controller and vibration in a phone that prevents them from suing Apple, Samsung, Google et al.?
Ok, I stand corrected... so this is a "patent pool" similar to those covering video compression etc., just much more trivial? I really wonder how you can have "2,600 issued or pending patents" for touch feedback technology. Except if they're including patents on e.g. the idea of making a touch screen feel like a physical keyboard, so they can immediately sue the poor soul who actually manages to pull it off...
> Except if they're including patents on e.g. the idea of making a touch screen feel like a physical keyboard, so they can immediately sue the poor soul who actually manages to pull it off...
You can only patent actual inventions, not ideas. So you can't just patent "touch screens which feel like a physical keyboard", but how your specific implementation of that works.
Sure you can, companies patent ideas constantly and then extort other companies with money because invalidating a crappy patent is extremely expensive from legal perspective.
my partner has a patent for the idea of adding texture to a glass touchscreen. she got this patent while throwing ideas at the wall in a meeting paypal has to just come up with patent ideas
You certainly can. What you can't do is patent and be 100% sure that it won't ever get invalidated in a challenge. But that never happens, because the incentive landscape makes it more attractive to licence: a company licencing instead of challenging passes the buck to its competitors, and even more importantly to potential future competitors. Patent troll companies are effectively offering moat-as-a-service and those moats perform just fine even if they are just imaginary moats.
Some estimates using reservation numbers, average waiting time and % of cancellations had a ballpark figure of 1 million around last October. Some websites are now quoting 3 million by now, although I don't know how they came to that number, but if the 1M figure of Oct2022 is realistic (I believe it is), then 3M by now does feel reasonable too.
Right, I don't know if those websites have accurate sources for those figures and I would need a direct verifiable source for them to prove those figures.
> Some websites are now quoting 3 million by now, although I don't know how they came to that number, but if the 1M figure of Oct2022 is realistic (I believe it is), then 3M by now does feel reasonable too.
Given we both don't know about how they derived those figures I can only see this as a pure speculation and I'm afraid that I would have to unfortunately dismiss those guesses and estimations, unless they have verified sources. Even better if it is directly from Steam themselves.
Asking a question with another question without answering mine directly isn't a good way to start a conversation.
It's really a genuine question since it is true that Steam doesn't reveal their Steam Deck sales and figures on this, yet we are already assuming it is a 'success' without benchmarking their performance against the existing generation of gaming consoles.
Assuming you have the figures, do you know what they are and how it compares to the current generation of games consoles on the market?
Once again the current patent system is shown to dampen innovation rather than accelerate it. The fact this type of patent extortion for commonplace features is even possible shows how much the system needs to be improved.
Unless these patents will be invalidated, this company will be able to sue any other company for 27 whole years for "thing vibrates when you touch it", "thing vibrates based on what's on the screen", "thing vibrates when you touch if (but with an algorithm somewhere)", "thing vibrates when something happens", "thing vibrates when you move your finger", or "thing vibrates when you push".
1. A computer-readable medium having instructions, the instructions including instructions that cause a processor to:
detect a first pressure on a first input device;
provide a first tactile sensation to the first input device, the first tactile sensation based at least in part on the first pressure;
[...][0]
In general any patent that doesn't help the reader recreate the invention should not be valid. They should be more like instruction manuals "describing the said invention or discovery, clearly, truly and fully,"[1] rather than a list of vague ideas.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 90.9 ms ] threadIt's an electric motor spinning a lopsided piece of metal. Primitive caveman "tech" that was known about before that company existed. They're a patent troll.
It’s one of those games where dying takes you way, way back. When the game is well balanced, I don’t mind, but this one is pretty easy as you go along and then the boss is so much more difficult than anything before. So you die and start over and do it again and again. But because the initial part of the game is pretty easy, you don’t really get much better in the lead up to the first boss.
Normally developers include accessibility controls to make the game enjoyable for everybody, but the Returnal developers didn’t. They want you to play their way, or not at all. I ended up choosing the latter. They got my money though, so I suppose in the end, they won.
While Valve’s hardware uses a different form of rumble than the ones that Sony and co. got sued for back in the day — linear resonant actuators (LRA), rather than an eccentrically swinging weight on a shaft — that didn’t stop Nintendo from signing an agreement with Immersion to bring its technology to the Switch, which uses LRAs as well. So does Sony’s DualSense, for that matter.
immersion didn't invent LRAs. their claim is that the use of LRAs vs swinging weights is irrelevant; that any vibration haptics via any means would constitute a patent infringement.
ex. 1: Global game jam game where one player has to only use rumble to achieve thier goal, the dev then went to make games for blind people, and rumble is still very much part of them. It definitely feels gimmicky but it kinda opened my eye to the fact that people perceive different parts of games in different ways, depending on their disabilities
ex 2: in Beat saber, rumble tells you when your controller hits something, it becomes such an important part of the experience that when my index controllers lost rumble I had to quit playing. Without being able to watch everywhere at all times, the haptic feedback becomes vital to knowing if you hit that note you were aiming for while focusing elsewhere.
This discourages competition from smaller outlets, and thus allows the big players fewer competitors. Though, again, pure speculation on my part.
And importantly, they don't want their own patents invalidated. They don't want legal precedents that weaken their own IP rights.
Nothing's different: https://ir.immersion.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...
You can only patent actual inventions, not ideas. So you can't just patent "touch screens which feel like a physical keyboard", but how your specific implementation of that works.
Don't mix theory and reality.
> Some websites are now quoting 3 million by now, although I don't know how they came to that number, but if the 1M figure of Oct2022 is realistic (I believe it is), then 3M by now does feel reasonable too.
Given we both don't know about how they derived those figures I can only see this as a pure speculation and I'm afraid that I would have to unfortunately dismiss those guesses and estimations, unless they have verified sources. Even better if it is directly from Steam themselves.
Your tone, the word actually and your final quip about them "being scared" says it all.
Question now is, what's your deal? Invested in a narrative where Steam Deck isn't a success?
It's really a genuine question since it is true that Steam doesn't reveal their Steam Deck sales and figures on this, yet we are already assuming it is a 'success' without benchmarking their performance against the existing generation of gaming consoles.
Assuming you have the figures, do you know what they are and how it compares to the current generation of games consoles on the market?
Unless these patents will be invalidated, this company will be able to sue any other company for 27 whole years for "thing vibrates when you touch it", "thing vibrates based on what's on the screen", "thing vibrates when you touch if (but with an algorithm somewhere)", "thing vibrates when something happens", "thing vibrates when you move your finger", or "thing vibrates when you push".
This is legal extortion.
1. A computer-readable medium having instructions, the instructions including instructions that cause a processor to:
detect a first pressure on a first input device;
provide a first tactile sensation to the first input device, the first tactile sensation based at least in part on the first pressure;
[...][0]
In general any patent that doesn't help the reader recreate the invention should not be valid. They should be more like instruction manuals "describing the said invention or discovery, clearly, truly and fully,"[1] rather than a list of vague ideas.
[0]https://patents.google.com/patent/US7336260B2
[1]https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Lar...