mobile Mobile: Blue tooth controllers - your thoughts?

[Urbanwarfare Studios]

Hello Everybody,

I am currently leading a team developing a game on Unity3D. The details of which don't matter but it is a sports simulation which in my opinion would not work on a touch screen device and would require a blue-tooth device/controller.

I know you can get them but I have no experience of them, their cost (the prices seem to vary a great deal) so I wanted appeal to the community on Neowin to ask if any of you have experiences you would care to share with me/us.

Do they work as well as a PS3/Xbox controller?

Has anyone found any limitations? Lag delay etc

We also want to develop for Ouya and as that runs on android if we can find a solution to make a release for android/iOS more likely it would really work in our favor.

We would perhaps like to attempt to partner with a manufacturer to supply a discount/unit with our game so any advice on who to approach/avoid at all costs would be great.

Thanks for your time!

Simon

[Arceles]

Any bluetooth controller has latency, this is very noticeable with 2D fighting games (for example Guilty Gear AC+) when the controller is wired I can do a lot of more combos and powers with precise timming, with wireless timming simply dissapears.

[Elliot B.]

Connected my Xbox 360 controller physically to a Galaxy Tab 2 via. USB/BT Joystick Center 6 and the amount of lag is ridiculous, makes playing any game awful (well, I've only tried SNesoid, but I couldn't play Mario, jumping happened a quarter-second after pressing, which is unplayable).

[Arceles]

Connected my Xbox 360 controller physically to a Galaxy Tab 2 via. USB/BT Joystick Center 6 and the amount of lag is ridiculous, makes playing any game awful (well, I've only tried SNesoid, but I couldn't play Mario, jumping happened a quarter-second after pressing, which is unplayable).

The Dualshock 3 works exceptionally well for anything that I've tested.....

[Gerowen]

As far as I'm aware, the PS3 controller is bluetooth, and it works amazingly well. There's no latency, at least that I can perceive, and syncing the controller to a different console is as easy as plugging in the USB cable and hitting the PS button in the middle, not to mention the fact that it works equally well for new games and for my old SNES emulators. I guess it depends on the controller the end user chooses and the hardware capabilities of the device they pair it to though, because a low end android device may show much more latency with the same controller than a higher end device like Ouya or something.

[jakem1]

I think it would be a mistake to develop a game that relied on niche hardware that most users won't have. If the game isn't suited to touch controls then it just might not be worth developing.

[compl3x]

I think it would be a mistake to develop a game that relied on niche hardware that most users won't have. If the game isn't suited to touch controls then it just might not be worth developing.

Agreed. Developing a mobile game which requires additional hardware seems like a risky proposition. Most people want to simply pull out their device and start playing, they don't want to set up controllers and such.

[SMELTN]

I have the Gameloft Game Duo controller for iOS and while it works great, it has HUGE limitations as its just for Gameloft games. I want a great bluetooth controller that would work for any game, but like everything else, the game devs have to incorporate controller support within the game.

There are jailbreak solutions as you can get an app on cydia called BluTrol that lets you use a good verity of controllers in this way.

[Urbanwarfare Studios]

Thanks everyone for your posts and you have enforced what I was already thinking - that the controls would have to change.

Had you said yeah this one is cheap and works great it might have been a different story.

Thanks again!

[compl3x]

When you have something to show us, I'd love to see what you come up with.