Sony considered twin sticks for PSPgo

[wraggster]

Backwards compatibility forced platform holder to ditch much-requested tech change
With every revision of the PSP that comes and goes the lust for a second analogue stick on the PSP increases – and Sony has now admitted that the feature very nearly became a reality with the upcoming PSPgo.
Speaking in the latest issue of GameInformer (via Kotaku), Sony development boss Shuhei Yoshida stated: “We also felt, like many users, that we wish we had a second analogue on the PSP.

“But we are talking about the mid-life cycle of this platform, and the PSPgo is designed to be perfectly compatible with the PSP-3000 and all the games that released before that.

“So we had a very serious discussion about this particular subject, but we decided not to add a second analogue, and some of the developers are doing quite a nice job translating the second analogue functionality to different buttons. We didn’t want to divert their efforts either.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/35122/Sony-considered-twin-sticks-for-PSPgo

[Mr. Shizzy]

Dear SONY;

This is why everybody hates you ;)

~Shizzy

[osgeld]

see, sony you could have dropped a little bit more horsepower in there, added a second analog stick and called it a psp2

compatibility issues solved

:confused:

[jxx2005]

This Is Why We Cant Have Nice Things

[BloodLust8]

PSPgo = As little work done as possible, charge more and don't give a fck what our clients want.

[PoorKingz]

If they added a second analog stick I would be pissed that I needed to by a new PSP just to play new games.

[ICE]

If they added a second analog stick I would be pissed that I needed to by a new PSP just to play new games.

Yup.

[stanfy86]

I really dont see how adding a 2nd analog to the psp would make old games un-playable.

Its like the PSX analog controller, when it came out any games made prior to its release simply diddnt make use of the sticks, and it wasnt untill publishers coded support into their games that we saw them actually being used.

Simply put if you play a psp game that was made prior to the release of the 2nd stick, it wont make use of it and you will have to use the face buttons as per normal.......

[PoorKingz]

I really dont see how adding a 2nd analog to the psp would make old games un-playable.

Its like the PSX analog controller, when it came out any games made prior to its release simply diddnt make use of the sticks, and it wasnt untill publishers coded support into their games that we saw them actually being used.

Simply put if you play a psp game that was made prior to the release of the 2nd stick, it wont make use of it and you will have to use the face buttons as per normal.......

Yes. And if you wanted to play new games all you had to do was buy a new controller. But with PSP, you would have to buy a new PSP. So I'm glad they didn't add a second analog.

[Eviltaco64]

I don't see why they couldn't add a second analog stick.

If they release newer games, then they can simply have support for the PSP Go's two sticks and the old-timey PSP's one stick.

EDIT: It's kind of like the late 90s. Some games had support for Sony's new Dualshock controller (and games like Ape Escape required it), but, for the most part, games worked on the old Playstation controller.

[stanfy86]

Yes. And if you wanted to play new games all you had to do was buy a new controller. But with PSP, you would have to buy a new PSP. So I'm glad they didn't add a second analog.


then the publishers of said game should have a check in the bootup that if it reads only one analog, it loads the usual controll scheme of face buttons = right analog stick and left nub = movement.......its really not hard to figure out ways around this

[bah]

Sega of the mid 90s showed why segmenting your fairly large consumer base is not a recipe for success.....
Perhaps some here are not old enough to have seen this first hand.

Nintendo was smart, they added coprocessors to carts and they were compatible with any (region permitting) SNES.
Sega had 32x, megacd and new controllers that had 6 buttons instead of 3, people (myself included) didn't like it.


I own a PSP, it should run all PSP software, until a new generation is released with significant improvements.


Its not as simple as detecting which model you have and crippling the controls for the 1000-3000.
Given a 2nd analogue, devs would want to take advantage of it. They would want to use the buttons AND the second analogue to provide similar-to-console control schemes.

That makes it significantly harder to translate back to the older PSPs than just 'map the 2nd nub to face buttons'.
It would require even more 'context sensitive' buttons or gameplay-slowing menus than console gaming (PSP even more so) already uses.


Nintendo with the hardware improvements in the DSi was smart enough to limit their access to downloadable content only, ensuring no pissed off DS fat/lite owners.
Sony would have gotten a lot more backlash for including the 2nd nub than leaving it off.

It was the smart decision.
Including only 1 analogue on the PSP-1000 when they knew it would be based on console ports; now there was the dumb decision.

[Stone Temple Pilots]

Yeah, it's too late to add a second analog stick. They had their chance in 2005.