It's been a while since we last got an update from ZodTTD on his
iControlPad iPhone controller accessory, but this latest prototype looks like it was worth the wait. The controls have been moved from the sides of the phone to a more comfortable-seeming bottom placement with dual analog sticks and rear-mounted triggers, and the whole thing's gotten bigger and badder -- there's even an internal battery for charging your phone as you play. ZodTTD says actual shipping hardware is coming soon -- just make sure you
change that default root password if you decide to jailbreak and grab one, mkay?
P.S.- ZodTTD says another video featuring psx4iphone and a "pretty sweet Wipeout XL demo" is coming shortly on
his YouTube channel, we'll keep you updated.
posted Nov 8th 2009 5:29PM
Sick!
What the fuck awesomeness?
DUAL ANALOG STICKS :P
Dual sticks... ya know, for all of the great 1st person shooters on the iphone.
This is almost (not quite) pointless.
I like how the A,X,Y,B buttons are blatantly from a Dreamcast controller.
If he didn't put dual analog sticks, then you would be whining that it needs dual analog sticks.
sacapunta
Did you know iphone has Duke Nukem 3D, DOOM, and a bunch of 3rd person shooters, including assassin's creed.
Dual analog sticks are NECCESSARY for movement and camera angles.
The dual sticks are definitely usefull, but I feel this is going to be a niche product. It seems it will be cool for jailbroken iphone/ipod touch owners that want to run emulators (the psx emu makes use of analog sticks), but I doubt it will gain much mainstream support.
Also, the fact that it doubles the width of the iphone/ipod makes it less portable. If they can get it so the controls either fold up or slide under, it would help.
Act now and double the size of your iphone.
@Acidox Eh, try again. For starters, the SNES had the A, B, X, Y combo before the Dreamcast did. Second, if you'll notice, the layout from the iControlPad matches that of the SNES perfectly, not the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast has X on the left, A on the bottom, Y on top, and B on the right. The SNES and iControlPad have Y on the left, B on the bottom, X on top, and A on the right.
Now go forth and spread your newfound knowledge, and do the console historians proud.
If apple would support this there would be no stopping the ipod touch/iphone.
except when it was replaced inevitably by something far superior.
If apple supports this then i'll accept the fact that the iphone/ipod touch is a handheld game console
Like maybe the DROID?
something like this just wouldnt sell, who wants to carry this around with ya, pointless unless you just use it at home which also defeats the point.
Yeah! Like the next iPod touch!
There's nothing stopping Apple from supporting it. Nothing stopping approved devs from using it either.
Apple supports 3rd party accessories. It's more like if these developers would only do it without jailbreaking their iPhones.
It would definitely be cool!
I can't see Apple supporting this though... I'm sure they'd just make their own controller accessory so they could have all the profits and charge app makers to take advantage of it!
I think they want to go with the wii kind of strategy of simplicity = broad appeal though. Buttons might scare some iphone/touch customers or confuse people.
Apple DOES support this. It's up to app devs to update their games for it to work, and then you won't need to jailbreak.
Hells yeah
DO WANT
+1
That's uber slick right there!
Hold up. You can get a black iPod?
iWant this. Lol @ PSPGo.
Tamagotchi is better than this...
Unless it removes or disables the camera, it can't turn the iPhone into a great gaming device.
Wha...? What does a gamepad attachment's disabling of a camera have to do with making the iPhone a great gaming device? You've lost me.
Besides, the DS has a camera -- one that is arguably as bad as the iPhone's -- in its latest incarnations, and it's still a great gaming device. I didn't pick one up and go, "What... what's this? A camera?! FUCK! A great gaming device this is no more!"
Ah, please read:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/09/steve-jobs-says-ipod-touch-didnt-get-a-camera-because-its-a-g/
Hah, wow. I see now. Well then, I s'pose those comments should be redirected to Steve Jobs. Thanks for clearing that up!
Ugh. I emailed them this idea but it looks hideous.
I said they should make space of all the black border around the screen, to minimize size. But whatever... I wont be buying this... Unless I buy it to mod it into something awesomer.
you should have mailed it to Microsoft. it would've ended up in windows 7.
Windows 7 would've been a great gaming device then!
This looks pretty cool. Hopefully it wont be rejected for having the letter "i" in it.
Damn it! Release this already!
Agreed, WANT!
This
Looks
Stupid
this really isn't practical, if it was slim and profiled like a PSP it would work, but obviously that's a lot of work when you don't have Apple, a major company, or Ben Heck to support you
if Apple would get their head out of their [rear-end] and learn to add buttons the iPhone would be crushing the DS
but with the stupid touch controls, game developers can't make stuff that's fun for more than 2 days
I just want to add that the competition isn't making it any easier to get real games on phones
Android, like Windows Mobile before it, suffers from hardware differences, meaning some devices have fast CPUs and GPUs and others don't, so developers get caught between making a great game for one device (DROID) vs making a mass market game for weaker devices (G1), since having a decent GPU isn't specified in Android or WinMo, manufacturers can skip that part to make cheaper phones,
The Pre on the other hand has the hardware, as ZodTTD has proved, but Palm doesn't official have the license to use the GPU, and it's not like it's accessible anyway from the current API
"some devices have fast CPUs and GPUs and others don't"
You mean like the different CPU / GPUs in the original iphone / 3g / itouch and the 3GS? Good on Apple for upgrading to the Cortex A8 / SGX in the 3GS, but it leaves developers in the exact same situation you're complaining about. There's a huge difference in performance between the old platform and the new one.
honestly it isn't the same deal,
the 3G S maybe might require a few changes but basically is backwards compatible with games for the older devices, and the older devices' ARM11 CPU and MBX GPU are still pretty decent,
with Android and WinMo you are dealing with the majority using ARM9 and no Graphics acceleration, and there's no clear direction going forward
It is exactly the same deal. All "1st-gen" android phones are using the 528MHz Qualcom ARM11 chip. It's essentially the same as the 412MHzSamsung ARM11 chip in the 1st-gen iphones, only clocked higher. Both "2nd-gen" platforms (Droid vs 3GS) are running Cortex A8 CPUs with PowerVR SGX GPUs. The Droid is also fully backwards-compatible with all existing Android software.
There is no "clear" direction going forward with the iphone either. Apple could change the platform tomorrow without warning. At least Android is an open platform produced by multiple manufacturers. Users can choose the phone with the hardware they want, and developers can program for the hardware they want. With the iphone, you're stuck with whatever Apple (and only Apple) feels like giving you.
actually it's not the case, the limited compatibility and the fact that HTC made most of the Android 1.X phones make it seem like the phones will get better with 2.0 and Sholes, but in reality as Android gets more expansive more companies will clamoring to make cheaper phones
with the iPhone, sure the platform is in the hands of Apple, but that's obviously why it has direction, Apple has this habit of upgrade products yearly and they will only improve on it
it may seem great to be able to develop for whatever hardware you want, but if you want to make money it's all about the market and if you have to choose between making something good and selling it to a handful vs making something unsatisfactory to sell it the masses, it doesn't make a very good platform to develop for
just to be clear, I'm not trying to bash 3rd party OSs like WinMo and Android, this is more the manufacturer's fault and I'm just hoping the reports that Microsoft is setting strict hardware requirements for WinMo 7 are true because it's stuff like crappy hardware that give consumers a bad experience with the OS, otherwise it could be like with netbooks in the PC market where manufacturers are racing to the bottom
Is there any chance it will be compatible with a non-jailbroken iPhone and official applications from the App Store? The inventors would have to get a license from Apple but aside from that I don't see any reason why it couldn't?
Doesn't the iPhone have a touch screen?
Yes, but trying to play games with it is like trying to read braile through a pair of kitchen gloves.
Don't real games benefit GREATLY from tactile controls...?
Depends on what you mean by "real" game. I'm fairly certain there are a million games that can easily be played without tactile feedback.
I like the idea, would definitely make playing a game on the iphone at the very least enjoyable, rather than a hassle
I'd totally get that!
You See if apple was not so uptight about having their touch and iPhone not having a keyboard they could of thought of away to redo the control pad and made it an accessory for gaming on the iPhone/Touch.
but you know apple not to do something till they put there own spin on it, saying they have improved it the apple way.
I'm pretty sure this only works with jailbroken iphones, I'm guessing that NES emulator is required as well. Why haven't you jailbroken your iphone yet? Oh well..... I'm headed to cydia to download NES emulator now (which I certainly would not have not before seeing this).
I think I like the original Icontrolpad better. This still quite awesome, the original one was super awesome though,
The above comment was meant to be a reply to Yoshi1080.
Did anyone else notice his amazing shell on Toad? That was my favorite part.
He had a couple impressive moves, i enjoyed it.
The iphone SDK 3.0 is supposed to allow developers to program devices for the 30 pin connector. I wonder if this is still a hack job.
I was thinking the same thing, this would be so cool if apps started to support control pads like this. You could also have other manufactures design competing pads as long as they had the same basic support, maybe they could drop the analog sticks to make them smaller but then people would have to understand they wouldn't be able to play some games as easily.
Just one glance at this should tell you why the iphone isn't a gaming device.
That's a stupid comment. I love games on iPhone. F.A.S.T, Galaxy on Fire, Star Pagga and duke Nukem 3D are only a few games I've got. iPhone runs most games really well.
Just one glance at your post should tell everyone what an ignoramus you are. Seriously, have you even tried some of the better games on the thing?
Jeez. You're better off getting a GP2X Wiz or a Dingoo A320, or just an older PSP and hack it if you want to run emulators. I don't see the point of turning the iPhone/iPod touch into a bulky thing just to play older games. It's kind of a waste of the elegance of the iPhone shape and design.
The Dingoo, Wiz, and PSP would cost a lot less, too.
Irrelevant troll is irrelevant.
good news.
Talk about diminished portability.
Would be sweet to see them nake something like this for palm pre and android phones as well.
As far as being better for gaming, this rendition is certainly a better design than the previous one.
However, it's. NOT as good for portability. It's a trade-off, but it's a trade-off that I would rather see as an option.
As far as whether or not this will work on non-jailbroken devices, I've been eagerly awaiting for this device since it was first published, and the developer has been saying all along that it will have built-in support for game developers to build their official app store releases to work with iControlpad.
It's nice to see some actual news on this; I was ready to write it off as vaporware!
Given this is only for jailbroken devices, it is going to be a niche product. The GameBone Pro is going to be interesting, as they are obtaining an Apple hardware license. This means an SDK that can be used for apps on the App Store. They just updated their web site and an official SDK will be released in 2 weeks :)
Check it out: http://gamebonepro.com/gamebonepro.html
Hey, thanks for the heads up. I hadn't heard of the GameBone Pro before. The name seems a little... unfortunate, but I'm all for additional gaming accessories/controllers for the iPhone.
Or, you could buy a PSP 3000. Just sayin'.
Didn't apple allow for developers to gain access to these kind of hardware API's? I can't understand why apple won't let someone make this hardware on the legit! Only reason I can figure is they are afraid they won't make their usual 500% markup on the hardware if they don't release it themselves. If the price can be kept reasonable I'm really wanting one of these!
Better to play PSX (and all other emulators) on a Dingoo.
Why in the world would anyone put this controller on the Iphone. The bulkness of the add-on device is almost as big as a PSP or a DS.
This thing has been 'right around the corner' for the last year. Now it's just undergone a huge re-design. I am totally looking forward to it, but as far as availability, I'll believe it when I see it.