This looks absolutely fantastic, but it's a bit of a shame that they will only be distributing them with the 300 beta kits. It would be nice if they could get more of them out into the wild so people can actually hold one and see how it feels. The only thing I cared about at E3 this year was seeing how the PS4 and Xbox One controllers actually felt in use.
It's interesting that they seem to have designed it largely to be used with existing game designs and input requirements in mind, but they've also made something that can create totally new input patterns and uses. The clickable joysticks on the playstation and xbox controllers were sadly never fully usable by designers because they don't work in a scenario where you want the player to click and hold but still be able to navigate with the stick. Obviously the haptic trackpad solves the click and drag to select mechanism that an RTS demands, but think of all of the other things that a click, hold and drag might be able to do in something like a boxing game, an FPS, a shmup (dual stick ikaruga on one pad with a game designed for it?) or even something like QWOP.
I really hope they make this available to more people.
It's interesting that they seem to have designed it largely to be used with existing game designs and input requirements in mind, but they've also made something that can create totally new input patterns and uses. The clickable joysticks on the playstation and xbox controllers were sadly never fully usable by designers because they don't work in a scenario where you want the player to click and hold but still be able to navigate with the stick. Obviously the haptic trackpad solves the click and drag to select mechanism that an RTS demands, but think of all of the other things that a click, hold and drag might be able to do in something like a boxing game, an FPS, a shmup (dual stick ikaruga on one pad with a game designed for it?) or even something like QWOP.
I really hope they make this available to more people.