Call me impressed. I never thought that the biggest innovator and risk taker in the console market would be valve. All the other manufacturers have basically made their platforms "safe" and they're pretty much like the last generation, but this is pretty ballsy from valve.
Maybe Valve have finished HL3, and are releasing a bunch of things to try out (F2P economy, marketplaces, trading cards, community upgrades, steambox), then if any have heavy backlash, they can just say "Shh guys, here's HL3".
Nintendo took a big risk for the Wii and reaped the rewards. From a consumer standpoint I want to see progress and change, that's what interests me. A lot of gaming these days seems to be taking the less risky route of making endless sequels and never mixing anything up as not to upset their core audience who apparently hates change.
I wouldn't say any console manufacturers took the "safe" route this time around. Microsoft was going to dramatically accelerate the adoption of digital games in the console market, and Sony bashing Microsoft for this and having a huge push for Independents/Self-Publishing, these don't sound like safe moves by any means. And that's not talking about Microsoft bundling Kinect, the Wii U controller, and Sony's abandoning of PlayStation Move.
If anything this is the most "un-safe" the console market has been in awhile.
Speaking on innovation, the Xbox 360 came out with a brand new controller, but the Xbox One has practically the same controller? It's like they didn't take any time to re-evaluate the controller with the new console.
For that matter, the PS4 controller is the same except with a small touchpad in the middle.
That's really the larger point here. The 360 controller is the standard now, trying to improve upon it when the market is already flooded with that style controller would be a losing battle for Valve. They decided to take a risk and innovate, but it was pretty much their only viable option if they wanted to enter the controller market.
"the Xbox 360 came out with a brand new controller, but the Xbox One has practically the same controller"
Calling the 360 controller "brand new" is a big stretch. It wasn't that much more different from the old Xbox Controller S than the Xbox One controller is from the 360's. In terms of technology the One controller with trigger-specific haptic is actually a bigger change than the Controller S->360 which was pretty much just button layout changes.
In any case, if something works well, why change it just for change's sake? I love Valve and I'm excited to try this controller, but put me on the list of people that are very skeptical this will actually be an improvement for the types of games that play well with two analog sticks.
They didn't need to innovate with the controller, their controller is the standard. They improved in all aspects that they needed to, i.e. the d-pad, and then fixed some ergonomics.
The PS3 controller, however, was kind of awful in comparison. Really light, horrible triggers. And they fixed that.
Saying the new controllers are the same except the features they have for the sake of marketing (Touchpad, and rumble triggers) is disingenuous.
They were busy trying to shift to a closed digital distribution platform, which gamers hanged them for. Granted their intentions were for their own profit margins and not at all for the consumer in mind, but things like that probably make them less likely to take risks in the future.
