PlayStation Vita

[KillerGremlin]

I don't think I am. At all. We are kind of veering in that direction, anyway.

Do you have an Android phone? Or an Iphone? And a good one...one of the recent ones.

There's been some cool tech demos of touch screen interfaces. Microsoft Surface is on the horizon in terms of showing up in homes (that shit has been out since like 2007...we are just now seeing widespread touch screen use). I truly believe Android/Iphones will eventually kill laptops. Eventually home computing will be reduced to a central household server, and your phone, TV...and even your walls or windows...will function as input devices. We are getting near that point with cloud computing.

Check this out:



Seriously, I enjoyed my DS...but the games that force you to utilize a touch screen and hard controls are just frustrating. I do enjoy the use of the touch screen as an interactive menu. Using the DS touch screen as a menu is a sweet idea. I enjoy using the main screen and standard controls to actually play the game. I dunno.

I'd say we are going to see widespread touch screen implementation within the next 10 to 15 years. You can already sync your phone up to your TV and computer. Pretty soon you will just need a monitor and a cloud server, and you will have a cloud computing system that just talks to your "Computer Screen" or "TV Screen."

It's coming. How will this affect gaming? I dunno. Seems like the big gaming market is casual games like the Facebook games and whatnot. I like Neo's idea of having a controller attachment. There are also on-screen controls for touch-screen devices. The fact is, everyone needs a phone, and the phone markets are saturated with games. It will be interesting to see how that impacts the more niche gaming market.

Edit: I still prefer a controller for 99% of games. You all know that. I'm just saying, this seems to be where the technology is moving. I'm not saying this is my view or this is what I agree with. You can't deny the state of the industry.

[Vampyr]

Touch screens are cool, but I don't think we'll ever go with them 100% for gaming. The tactile feedback from buttons and analog sticks is too important.

[Blix]

I don't own a smart phone yet. But when I get to play games on my friend's phone I can't help but want to use actual buttons. You end up putting your hands in the most weird ways to do what you really want to do, specially if the game uses the movement recognition controls at the same time. This is true when playing games that try to fully realize what consoles already do. There was this airplanes game where you had to tilted the iPhone to move the air plane and tapped a part of the screen to shoot missiles and every time we wanted to shoot something we had to take our hand off the iPhone to tap the screen. Maybe a better button placement would have solved it, I dunno. But so far the games that I have played don't make me believe that touch screens as the only way for input is a good thing. And of course, you're making screen space and input compete, something that shouldn't have to be. On-screen buttons just don't cut it for me. I feel that using touch-screen to complement the actual buttons is the way to go. Of course, this depends mostly on the developers thinking things carefully and the type of game you're playing. But so far, I think developers need to keep improving the ways they implement touch controls into their games.

I'll post more later, if I have the time.