7-inch pocket gaming concept blows our minds six ways from Sunday | Hacker News Reader

7-inch pocket gaming concept blows our minds six ways from Sunday

engadget.com

36 pointsevo_930 comments

Yeah this isn't gonna fly. They're basically just adding OLED keys to a netbook, and the result looks like an ugly netbook.

I know exactly how to make the best mobile gaming device. You need something more along the lines of a wide Playstation controller with dual-analog sticks on the thumbs. I never understood why they think the buttons need to be facing upward and used only by your thumbs, that's wrong. Your thumbs are the most dexterous and should only be used for analog joysticks. Buttons should be on the backside of the device under each finger so you can press them while gripping the device.

To the average person, being able to see the buttons is hugely important. I've seen plenty of otherwise capable people struggle with the B (trigger) button on the Wii. I can't imagine if there were more than one.

And that's besides trying to name the damn things (PS2/3's L1 L2 L3 is horrible)

The Xbox has 2 buttons (one analog trigger, one digital) that are not visible, so it's not a totally alien concept. I'm just saying to use that idea, and move a few more buttons to the backside and leave the thumbs for analog input. Imagine using a thumbstick and a trackball at the same time, while your other fingers are available for other button presses at the same time. Desktops can't even do this type of input correctly because they're stuck with that ancient mouse-thing from the 1980's.

It's been done, people hated it:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i53.tinypic.com/e...

The XBox controller has a much larger difference between the buttons than the PS2/3 does. The PS1 one was absolutely terrible. I could never remember which bumper was 1 and which was 2, and I used the damn thing all the time.

Xbox's LB and LT make more sense, even if it isn't perfect.

Of course, I know plenty of people who could never remember that the Z button existed on the GameCube controller.

Of course, I was talking about average folks, and this product is clearly not aimed for them.

Most gamers I know game in a dark bedroom and not in brightly lit coffee shops as the press photos suggest; The big, easily read illuminated keys are sort of a big deal.

Check again - this isn't independent OLED key screens like the Optimus was/is. It's a single, plain LCD underneath some hard plastic keys with a window in the right place.

>I know exactly how to make the best mobile gaming device. You need something more along the lines of a wide Playstation controller with dual-analog sticks on the thumbs.

Good luck playing something like WoW with a gamepad.

Netbooks have reduced keyboard space due to the need for a trackpad. This thing apparently does away with it and just uses a touchscreen, leaving more room for the keyboard (partly mitigating the gorilla-finger problem too).

Still, I wonder if it's really possible to have long gaming sessions with the arm stretched out like that, it can't be that comfortable.

There is a reason that they use 6 year old games like the warcraft rpg to demo underpowered gaming platforms like those based on atom chips. You really need a last generation core 2 culv at a minimum to see decent performance on games that have come out semi-recently and aren't intentionally crippled. The GPU can make up for a lot but it doesn't magically remove the cpu ops needed. They'd have a hard time fitting a decent gpu in there too, my 14" with a mobile 5650 and a core i5 still struggles to play many modern games at anything but medium, and gets up to ~85c in a much larger chasis.

take a look at the alienware 11" if you want to see the realistic world of ultra-portable pc gaming.

verdict = pipedream

What a blatant copy of Jony Ive from Apple style videos by this Singapore man. The voice, the camera, the light, is a clone and feels unnatural to me.

This device looks too thick, it seems Intel continue needing big batteries for portable computing and ARM is going to eat them alive in this segment.

It's such a blatant copy of Ive that it makes me think they did it very purposefully just to see if people would notice.

Yeah, Min-Liang Tan seems like he's doing a parody of Ive to me.

I was thinking it was a copy of the Dyson vacuum guy.

Isn't the most important part of PC gaming the mouse? How are they playing WoW and DotA without a mouse?

#2 would be the wide variety of keys provided by a PC keyboard. #3 would be a large, high quality monitor. #4 would be the ability to upgrade video cards and other hardware from a vast secondary market. #5 would be being able to use the computer for other purposes than gaming.

There was a shot in the video with the device next to a mouse. I think it's still a full on PC, you can bring a mouse if you want to. It's "just" sort of a funny form factor netbook.

Que the $80 Razer mouse.

Razer. Don't make fun of things you don't know about. High quality mice are important. What would you buy instead? I looked at logitech mice of high enough DPI to use on my 27" iMac without any acceleration and I was not impressed. Razer makes nice stuff.

I have Razer mouse (Copperhead, blue LEDs ftw). I'm just saying that Razer is probably not motivated to nix their mice line and go pure-button or touchscreen. They will be more than happy to sell you their mice with their mini lappies.

I actually use a Logitech G5 mouse and a Logitech G15 keyboard and I love them both. The mouse has a really nice rubber feel, adjustable weight (which is actually a nifty thing once you realize how much that weight matters), and some really nice side buttons.

Not that Razer is bad. I used to have one of their keyboards and I liked that as well.

Hmm... I'm not sure how a player would walk diagonally in RPG shown in the screenshot if they've only got one thumb for two keys.

Gimme a d-pad or go home.

This device reinforces the fact that I have an irrational desire for oled buttons.

It would be even better if the button surface was the same capacitive sensor stuff that new trackpads and the old touchstream keyboards use.

By the way, does anyone on HN have hands-on experience with the Pandora console?

Let's take a page from Steve Jobs' playbook.

Get rid of the hinge. This also gets rid of the latch and reduces manufacturing costs. Get rid of most of the buttons. This way, you don't have to pay for the displays on most of them. Keep the buttons with the dynamic displays, but have fewer of them along the side. Add some "trigger" buttons on non-visible surfaces and two D-pads. Software keyboards are good enough for in-game use. Multi-use buttons with displays have the same problems as a software keyboard anyhow. (The space is not available for the other controls when you are using the qwerty keyboard.)

One of the things that really distinguishes pc gaming from console gaming is the availability of lots of buttons. did you see the wow example in the video? you really want lots of buttons for some games. Well, i do anyway.

I suspect that "lots of buttons" is really just a consequence of the available interfaces. I think something better could be designed.

Is a piano without keys but instead 4 strings and a bow still a piano? You could build a different interface, no question. I'm not sure what the threshold is, but at a certain point, you're not playing the same game anymore.

World of Warcraft != Angry Birds.

Does it come with a free visit to the chiropractor?

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