Sony gearing up to relaunch old-gen features on PS3 in US, Europe still waiting

Sony is bracing North America for the arrival of its bleeding edge new technology, the rumbling AND motion sensing DualShock 3 controller. The very notion was once thought so far beyond the realms of possibility that it must be an affront to God Himself, and so we were left to make do with the SIXAXIS, which detects motion only.

Then of course Nintendo created the Wii remote. Not only does it manage far more impressive feats of motion detecting, but it vibrates and it even has a speaker in it. Heresy! Sony turned out be telling a few porky pies about combining SIXAXIS motion detection with old-school DualShock rumbling. Thus the DualShock3 was born.

It launched in Japan bloody ages ago of course, and there’s still no sign of it in Europe. Next week though, it will be making its glorious debut Stateside. Many US games journo have managed to have a go on it and they have been rendered almost incapable of speech at the sheer brilliance of it., but there fuddled musings can be loosely summed up “Hey, isn’t it cool to have rumble back”.

Although we feel that the $55 is sort of taking the piss for a controller that does what the SIXAXIS should have done in the first place – point proved by the fact that Sony is now discontinuing the static original controller – it would be nice to see them arrive over here. Does anyone else feel like Sony is deliberately labouring the point to make it seem like manufacturing these things is more difficult than it actually is? Or possibly to justify the expense. Who knows – we’ll just have to sit tight.

The only other problem facing the DS3 is that not all PS3 games support it. Those that do will require updating and some will even force you to hunt down the specific rumble patch from their internal update system. Ugh.

Here’s the full list of supported games:

• Formula One Championship Edition (PS3)
• SCEA – MotorStorm (PS3)
• SCEA – PAIN (PSN)
• SCEA – High Velocity Bowling (PSN)
• SCEA – MLB 08: The Show (PS3)
• SCEA – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3)
• SCEA – Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
• SCEA – Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3)
• SCEA – Go! Sports Ski (PSN)
• SCEA – Folklore* (PS3)
• SCEA – Heavenly Sword (PS3)
• SCEA – Warhawk* (PSN / PS3)
• SCEA – Super Stardust HD (PSN)
• SCEA – Snakeball (PSN)
• SCEA – Toy Home (PSN)
• SCEA – PSOne Emulation (PSN)
• SCEA – Piyotama (PSN)
• SCEA – PixelJunk Monsters (PSN)
• SCEA – Blast Factor (PSN)
• Sega – Condemned 2: Bloodshot (PS3)
• Ubisoft – Lost: Via Domus (PS3)

PlayStation (via PSPSPS)

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