Whilst it’s a simple fact that mobile gaming has taken a significant portion of the handheld market, one of the key reasons that many core gamers steer clear of the format is the lack of dedicated physical inputs. It would seem however that mobile company Samsung intends to remove this obstacle with the unveiling of their prototype wireless game pad for the Galaxy and Note range of phones, shown at their press reveal for the new Galaxy S4.
The pad itself is clearly modelled on the 360’s, featuring dual analogue sticks, a d-pad, shoulder buttons and similarly coloured face buttons in the familiar layout. It’s powered by two AAA batteries and connects by bluetooth so the length of play between it and a tethered phone will be a key question when it launches this Summer.
Android is set to become a significant player in the core games market this year, with the arrival of Ouya, and various other Android based consoles, all featuring traditional input sets. Samsung are obviously keen to convert even more handheld gamers away from their Nintendo and Sony devices, and as Android devices become increasingly powerful and prolific Samsung providing their own controller speaks volumes about their aims moving forward.
The newly revealed S4 will feature the same size screen as a PS Vita, with a 1080 x 1920 resolution (compared with the Vita’s 960 x 544), 2GB of RAM and both a quad-core processor and an octo-core one as well. Whilst numbers do not remotely translate to quality software, developers will have significant power to play around with, and if there is a good level of support for the gamepad we could start to see some genuinely impressive gaming experiences appearing for the platform, tailored for the core market.
Source: Engadget
Paranoimia
Meh. Really don’t see why people would bother with any of these devices, personally. There’s nothing I’d consider relevant to so-called ‘core’ gamers on Android.
There are a few gems, but those all make good use of the touch screen and don’t need a proper controller. The games that do need a proper controller to make them playable (racers, FPS etc.) are graphically pretty, but otherwise shallow and unrewarding experiences. I connected my DualShock3 to my Nexus 7 to try some of them, and while it made them far more playable, there’s sadly nothing it can do to improve the game.
Just my personal opinion, of course, but I’ve been playing games for many years, and for me the current standard of most mobile games is a large step backwards.
Foxhound_Solid
360 layout would kill me!
Roynaldo
Probably the tackiest piece of kit i’ve seen in recent years.
Awayze
Samsuck still copying other companies.