YC will back anything these days. Paul Graham talks about "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas" and tackling the real hard problems, and then we get a little controller for an iPhone. Yawn.
Why isn't there a link to Coco[1]? Or its Kickstarter page[2]?<p>[1]: <a href="http://cococontroller.com/games/" rel="nofollow">http://cococontroller.com/games/</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/games/the-coco-controller" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/games/the-coco-controlle...</a>
It feels like a tough sell to me. We've seen quite a few iPhone gamepads of varying quality and as far as I'm aware, none have really taken off. Even a super simple SDK takes time to implement properly, and if it's only going to benefit a few percent of your users at best, I don't see why devs would bother; and if there isn't much support, gamers won't bite.<p>What bothers me the most is their belief that "Real Games Need Real Buttons". On the contrary, game devs seem to be doing perfectly well without buttons on smartphones, and customers don't seem to be complaining either, judging by the success of touch-native games like Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, Flight Control, Cut the Rope, etc. You might think that these aren't 'real games' but that's a remarkably narrow-minded opinion.<p>Regarding the price: the $42 coco is described as being "less than stores" which suggests a ~$50 price tag. If you got a few games for free, that'd be OK, but otherwise it's very steep.
Very awkward placement of the analog stick - you can use either the stick or the buttons, never both at the same time. I don't believe any of the mainstream handhelds or console controllers have had this arrangement, probably with good reason.
Yet another device that interfaces through the audio port.<p>I think it is tragic that Apple's restrictive approach to hardware interfacing to iOS devices is leaving developers with no options. Talk about going back a few decades.<p>You can't even do a simple serial port interface on an iOS device without going through the MFI gauntlet. Absolutely ridiculous in 2012.
This could actually be huge. All they need is a few high DAU accounts to help them market this device. I totally agree with their premise that current games are limited by the touch functionality. If they can bring the price down and just get to a medium-sized installed base, their free app will work wonders for small indie-sized devs. Current game devs are being priced out of the market for advertising, but if they can innovate on the discovery end, they could become a low-cost Xbox competitor with a much larger catalog of games.
This is one of those ideas that, on the surface, seems to make sense...but I just don't see a big enough market out there for it to gain any traction.<p>I don't think people are going to carry this thing around with their iPhone, and if they <i>really</i> care about games, they already have dedicated consoles with way better AAA titles than iOS will have for at least a few more years. These types of gamers may also have a 3DS.<p>If this somehow takes off like the Ouya did on kickstarter, it'll be interesting to see if it sticks. Good luck, regardless of my skepticism! :)<p>Also - this should be linking to the kickstarter, not some techcrunch babble.<p><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/games/the-coco-controller" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/games/the-coco-controlle...</a>
I have noticed that touchscreen implementations of controls and joysticks, while sometimes quite good, leave some things to be desired. (Meteor Blitz on the iPhone is a good example. It's very well done, but I find it's fatiguing for extended playing.)<p>Between this, the iCade, and the HDMI-out I wonder why someone isn't trying to develop TV/living room-oriented game hardware for iOS devices?
This is awesome. It opens the door to using your phone to play almost any game you'd usually play on an xbox or playstation (or n64 in my case). I didn't like the idea of playing first person shooters on my phone before. Or, really anything past simple tap or slide games. This definitely does change things.
I make iOS games for a living, and our hands are full enough trying to handle the fragmentation of device capabilities on iOS/Android. Adding another code path we have to worry about testing so that we can support a market that will be a tiny, tiny percentage of the whole? Yea, no.
This looked more interesting to me, but for whatever reason the kickstart has been canceled.
<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bladepad/bladepadthe-detachable-iphone-gamepad" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bladepad/bladepadthe-det...</a>
This essentially makes your phone into an OUYA. Awesome. I hope these guys can capture some of the furor that fueled the OUYA kickstarter. If this takes off it will seriously change the face of mobile gaming.
If this has any sign of success... A Chinese clone of it will be out on the US market for half the announced price before these even hit the store shelves.<p>Bookmark it.