[Harry]

Originally Posted by merylsilverburg

Sony is revealing themselves to be insecure and manipulative, which bugs me even more.

You are so right; even the lack of the vibration function in the new controller is, in my opinion, a big loss, at least from a marketing point of view. I think that in 90% of videogames, vibration was nothing more than a little addition that didn't improve the gameplay; but in some of the finest PlayStation games it was relatively important. I think about Survival Horrors, where vibration can be used to create suspense and let you "feel" the blow when attacking some enemies (I really enjoyed the feeling I got when hitting giant bugs in Silent Hill using a pickaxe), but in general about games that made a more thorough use of the Dual Shock. It seems Kojima was incredibly pissed off by the announcement, as he was planning to do a great use of vibration in MGS4. In fact, can you imagine fighting those robots/Metal Gears without "sensing" the vibration produced by their heavy steps on the ground?

In general, Sony seems more scared of Microsoft than they probably want to admit, even though I do not understand why. If Microsoft wasn't around, they would have never released different versions of the same console. Sure, Microsoft secured rights on the GTA series (which is a great loss for Sony), but Sony still has much more support from third party developers. Not to mention that a lot of gamers, in particular outside North America, perceive the Xbox 360 as an updated version of the Xbox, a sort of Xbox 1.5. In most countries in Europe, for example, the Xbox is still perceived as a second choice, after all other PlayStation platforms.