Xbox One Controller Cost Over $100 Million To Develop 206
mrspoonsi writes "The Xbox One controller went through many radical designs, including a built-in pico projector and a cartridge designed to release smell. Apparently, 'the core base didn't appreciate them,' so these wacky features were dropped in favor of a standard controller. According to VentureBeat, over $100 million worth of research went into the design they ended up using. 'Microsoft’s first tweaks for a new controller focused on the overall size and how it’d fit into hands, golden or otherwise. Using the Xbox 360 controller as a starting point, the engineers would make plastic-molded or 3D-printed prototypes that were each 1 millimeter wider or narrower than the last, testing a full range of up to plus or minus 8 millimeters. “That gave us the ability to test, with actual users including women and children, which width feels best,” said Morris. “We tested with more than 500 people throughout the course of the project. All ages, all abilities.” ... Morris and his team then looked at different thicknesses and shapes of the grips (or “lobes,” as he calls them), plus the angle of the triggers, different styles of analog sticks, and more.'"
Wow... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously? OVER a million? It's a nice controller, but really... Maybe this is one of the things wrong with Microsoft (and perhaps many big corps these days), they are not "nimble" and hevent been for at least 20 years. They have a lot to overcome if they want to remain "relevent", and Ballmer's departure is onle a very small part of that.
Re:That's not exactly right... (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was in a large bleeding edge project, we went through making multiple ASIC, our own processor, PCB design and a large software team and that burn rate was about $1 mil per month.
I can't believe that a game controller would need 8 years worth of R&D that we were doing into it.
Putting it in perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
It cost over $100 million, the reason is if you have too much money, you spend too much money. There is very little reason for them to be efficient. Why do you think Facebook can offer $3 billion dollars for snapchat, a company that has no revenue. They have more money than they know what to do with.
Think of it this way if you got a billion dollars today you may go out and by some expensive sport car(s), would they get you from a to b any quicker, safer, more reliably, no, no, and no. You still need to keep to the speed limit, most cars can do that, with that extra power you are probably more likely to crash they are not designed for safety. A car like a Toyota is far more reliable. The only thing you gain is showing people you can afford to spend that much money on a car.
Sorry about the car analogy.
Look at these yachts, http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/10-expensive-yachts-world/ [celebritynetworth.com] number 1 is a fake but number 2. $800 mil for a yacht, that's 8 Xbox controllers.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's sad, really (Score:4, Interesting)
There's something really sad in looking at all those research groups who fail to get adequate funding for medical research or research to otherwise improve a person's life, and yet a company is able to waste $100 million developing a single component for a fucking GAMING CONSOLE of all things.
Microsoft isn't a Government department and they can do what they like, but it's just so damn disproportionate the amount of money that goes into research in terms of long-term importance. People are dying because there's not enough research to treat various diseases, but fuck that, the angle permutations of a life-wasting device must be calculated precisely, gimme more money. OK, thanks. Fuck this planet.
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing I thought was interesting about the WiiMote was that it was one of the only (probably the only popular one) controller which was ambidextrous.
Interesting point. It was physically ambidextrous in the sense that it was symmetrical, but it was far from ambidextrous.
Any game that required you to hold it like a gamepad presumed it would be the same orientation, (ie like an NES gamepad). To reprogrammit to work the 'other way' would require both the buttons to be swapped and the d-pad inverted. I don't think many (if any) titles supported that.
And when held like a remote, it was more ambidextrous than most games, but often the game needed to be designed for lefties, or allow for it.
Wii Sports for example let you set left and right handed use, for each sport individually. (Kudos to Nintendo there; I do most of the sports left handed, but I golf right handed (and not especially well) due to having grown up in a house with only right handed clubs.)
But many of the 3rd party mini-games & party games did not allow for left handed use. Usually things were fine, but there'd always be one or two spots where it would go all wrong.
The one that leaps to mind was a frisbee toss minigame in one of the titles we had.
The game was expecting a left to right-up flick. So attempting it left handed was a right to left flick, and it went all wrong. Most of the time it didn't even recognize the flick at all, would react half-assed before or after the actual flick. You could hold it upside down, but that was still botched because down was now up. And it would react like you just threw it into the ground.
I just switched to doing it right handed. Kind of annoying really.
For what its worth as background, as a lefty I liked the xbox 360 controller (don't have an xbox, but have a controller paired with my PC); and I liked the wii-u classic controller. I FPS with my right hand on WASD, and my left on the mouse. The mouse I'm currently using is a razer deathadder left handed model, with the buttons programmed so that the left mouse button is on the left. (I like the left mouse for the ergo comfort, but after years of using RH mice, my middle finger is my 'left click', and my index finger is 'right'. (The fact that Razer defaults them 'backwards' drives me nuts, as after a reboot, the buttons are backwards until the razer programmability software is loaded, which is retarded.)
I also tried switching them in the windows mouse control panel, but that had all kinds of side effects... they were right on my desktop, but backwards when I RDP into another unit... which was far more annoying than the couple seconds of stupid at startup.
If Razer is reading this, save which button is left and right right on the mouse itself. But I'm well and off on a tangent now. :)
Re:That's not exactly right... (Score:4, Interesting)
I participate in surveys and focus groups when I can and they can be quite interesting, and expensive on the part of the tester. A few months back, I had the opportunity to try various formulations of a hard cider produced by a major beer company. (I want to say it was Coors, based on the demo packaging, but that's probably wrong.) One at a time, they gave me sealed cans of slightly-different ciders in nondescript packaging with instructions to pour it into a (new) cup, munch on various snack foods, fill out the survey, call the guy in for the next can, repeat, for a total of 8 different versions. For my trouble, I got to keep the half-eaten bag of crackers, drink all the cider I wanted until I decided to leave (or got drunk, I suppose), and 50$ cash.
Another time, I got a steak dinner, with dessert, and a voucher to some mail order company where I got a free set of pots and pans. What were they actually testing? Steak sauce.
There's a lot of random stuff in R&D... and paying the subjects are an area that can add up to be intriguingly costly.
misleading..it didn't take anywhere near $100M (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok, let's set the record straight. These articles are totally misleading. It didn't take anywhere near $100M to develop this controller. What happened is that MSFT spent $100M on an R&D adventure to design, build, and evaluate many different types of controllers before deciding that the current design, with a few tweaks, is the best way forward. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's a good use of the their R&D dollars. I bet the actual dev costs for the controller were closer to $20M. And considering that it will probably generate at least $3B in revenue for MSFT, $20M is small potatoes. Nintendo, by comparison, spends billions on interface/controller R&D.
Shneiderman's 8 Golden Rules (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is a list of Shneiderman's 8 Golden Rules for anyone who might be interested. It's has been typically used as an introductory 'U/X' concept for years (me personally I introduce. the Law of Cybernetics first).
They've been restated many times since the 80s. From the source(http://faculty.washington.edu/jtenenbg/courses/360/f04/sessions/schneidermanGoldenRules.html)
These rules were obtained from the text Designing the User Interface by Ben Shneiderman.
To improve the usability of an application it is important to have a well designed interface. Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design" are a guide to good interaction design.
1 Strive for consistency.
Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations; identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens; and consistent commands should be employed throughout.
2 Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
As the frequency of use increases, so do the user's desires to reduce the number of interactions and to increase the pace of interaction. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user.
3 Offer informative feedback.
For every operator action, there should be some system feedback. For frequent and minor actions, the response can be modest, while for infrequent and major actions, the response should be more substantial.
4 Design dialog to yield closure.
Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the completion of a group of actions gives the operators the satisfaction of accomplishment, a sense of relief, the signal to drop contingency plans and options from their minds, and an indication that the way is clear to prepare for the next group of actions.
5 Offer simple error handling.
As much as possible, design the system so the user cannot make a serious error. If an error is made, the system should be able to detect the error and offer simple, comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.
6 Permit easy reversal of actions.
This feature relieves anxiety, since the user knows that errors can be undone; it thus encourages exploration of unfamiliar options. The units of reversibility may be a single action, a data entry, or a complete group of actions.
7 Support internal locus of control.
Experienced operators strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their actions. Design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders.
8 Reduce short-term memory load.
The limitation of human information processing in short-term memory requires that displays be kept simple, multiple page displays be consolidated, window-motion frequency be reduced, and sufficient training time be allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of actions.