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why 7?

i'm on the shitter thinking to muself why Sony is letting 7 controllers connect via bluetooth. what's wrong with 8 or 6?

any crazy european or japanese sports that support 7 active players per team?
 
I would think it has to do with how practical any more would be. Prolly because of hardware limitations too.

How much strain does each controller force upon a console's cpu?
 
it sounds strange to me as well, I dont see why they would support 7 controllers instead of 8, or even 10 for a good 5 on 5 nba game. at least they could pick an even number so the teams could be fair. i was going to say maybe you can only play with 4 people on one console, and the extra 3 bluetooth "ports" are for something else, but that doesnt make sense because then all but the 4th player would get an extra "port" or channel, if you get what im saying. Anyways I dont see how 7 makes sense. one for each spe! woo!
 
It's because they're using Bluetooth. A Bluetooth piconet consists of up to 8 devices (1 master and 7 slaves).
 
Photon said:
It's because they're using Bluetooth. A Bluetooth piconet consists of up to 8 devices (1 master and 7 slaves).

I was just about to post this
 
I always thought 5 would be a good 'magic number' for controllers: 4 regular controllers and room for one shared peripheral, like a camera or microphone.
 
impirius said:
I always thought 5 would be a good 'magic number' for controllers: 4 regular controllers and room for one shared peripheral, like a camera or microphone.

I'd bank on 6 + peripherals.
3 vs 3 would be easy then

but 7 is odd... then again the one channel could be used for something else (Cordless Eyetoy or something)
 
a few 7s popped up in sony's conference presentation...7 controllers, 7 SPUs (is that right?) on the ps3's version of cell...a couple others. i bet it has some occult significance. those sony guys seem a bit evil. as opposed to the microsoft guys, who just seem a bit sad.
 
which bluetooth are they using?
I believe there's 2 versions, one with a 10m range and one with a 100m range?
Also isn't Bl;uetooth very power hungry?
I know on my PDA Bluetooth drains the battery MUCH quicker than the Wi-Fi.
 
ThongyDonk said:
which bluetooth are they using?
I believe there's 2 versions, one with a 10m range and one with a 100m range?
Also isn't Bl;uetooth very power hungry?
I know on my PDA Bluetooth drains the battery MUCH quicker than the Wi-Fi.

yep, when i have it turned on my PDA and cell Phone go dead in just a few hours
 
ThongyDonk said:
which bluetooth are they using?
I believe there's 2 versions, one with a 10m range and one with a 100m range?
Also isn't Bl;uetooth very power hungry?
I know on my PDA Bluetooth drains the battery MUCH quicker than the Wi-Fi.

It's...a console. But yes, Bluetooth drains battery faster than the Wi-Fi.
 
Amir0x said:
It's...a console.


Yes i know, but the controllers aren't.

Anyway need to know which Bluetooth version they are using, also is Bluetooth a good option? I don't think its as reliable or fast as Wi-Fi
 
I'm curious how the PS3 is going to handle 3 to 8 player PlayStation and PS2 games. Since there was no standard for which controller port the multitap plugged into, it's gonna be an engineering and/or tech support nightmare for SCEI.

Or are we going to be limited to two players on the PS3 in multitap-compatible PlayStation and PS2 games?
 
i hate bluetooth because it loses connection really easily. I use a bluetooth mouse with my laptop and it has a tendency to stop being recognized if i don't use it for a few seconds, especially if i've got wifi going at the same time. sony's testing dept better make sure that ps3 controllers don't have the problem that bluetooth does.
 
SKOPE said:
I'm curious how the PS3 is going to handle 3 to 8 player PlayStation and PS2 games. Since there was no standard for which controller port the multitap plugged into, it's gonna be an engineering and/or tech support nightmare for SCEI.

Or are we going to be limited to two players on the PS3 in multitap-compatible PlayStation and PS2 games?

I doubt Sony even cares :lol
 
7 makes no sense, it would mean 4 vs 3 players, also using 2 tvs it would mean 4 players on 1 tv and 3 on the other, which translated to the standard cross division for 4 players means a black square in the tv of the 3 players.
 
they really should axe using bluetooth.

but 7 is not a big deal, most games will probably be limited to 2/4/6 players just for even-ness.
 
who says its limited to 7 players?

theoretically, you could have 13 players at once if you have that many controllers. just have to connect 6 upto the USB ports.

But 7 is more than most people will need... so just go for the largest cost effective number... since it needs a bluetooth piconet to operate 4 devices, might as well increase it to 7 instead of arbitarily limiting it to 4 slave devices, leaving 3 unused.

But yeah... more would rock for a party type game, but like I said, if you need 8 players, you'd need 2 screens, 8 controllers, surely it wouldn't be too much trouble to have one guy sitting with a wire into the PS3, while the others can opt for wired or wireless.
 
Is lag/latency an issue for bluetooth? In college we developed a bluetooth game running with two mobile phones and it had somewhat significant latency (~50-100ms), but it was Bluetooth 1.0.. I think Microsoft is using a specialized version of Wi-Fi to completely eliminate all latency problems, I wonder how Sony's solution will be.
 
OniShiro said:
7 makes no sense, it would mean 4 vs 3 players, also using 2 tvs it would mean 4 players on 1 tv and 3 on the other, which translated to the standard cross division for 4 players means a black square in the tv of the 3 players.

It's not about making sense, it's a freakin' limitation of Bluetooth technology: 7 Slaves, 1 master. I can't believe people are complaining about 7 controller limit. This is up from 2 ports, guys! Remember that ;)
 
I think Bluetooth 2.0 is much closer to wi-fi in terms of power consumption and about the same transfer rate too, i doubt anyone will be able to find a difference performance wise between Wifi & Bluetooth controllers. Sony are probably just using it because they are involved in the development (via Ericsson).
 
thorns said:
Is lag/latency an issue for bluetooth? In college we developed a bluetooth game running with two mobile phones and it had somewhat significant latency (~50-100ms), but it was Bluetooth 1.0.. I think Microsoft is using a specialized version of Wi-Fi to completely eliminate all latency problems, I wonder how Sony's solution will be.

2.0 shouldn't be a problem... reduces latency by 5-10 times...

so 5-20ms latency shouldn't be a huge problem for all but the most hardcore. If it comes down to that (i.e. you need just frame moves in fighting games) i.e. predict ahead of time, or plug it in.
 
Zaptruder said:
But yeah... more would rock for a party type game, but like I said, if you need 8 players, you'd need 2 screens, 8 controllers, surely it wouldn't be too much trouble to have one guy sitting with a wire into the PS3, while the others can opt for wired or wireless.

IMO, if you have 8 players and two screens, get one of the other 7 to bring another PS3 and hook them up via the gigabit LAN for some fun.

No to dual screens!
 
mrklaw said:
IMO, if you have 8 players and two screens, get one of the other 7 to bring another PS3 and hook them up via the gigabit LAN for some fun.

No to dual screens!

What's wrong with dual screens? Not going to be able to use full 1080p res on both screens at once?

The hell do you hassle bringing around PS3s and wires and making mess everywhere... think man THINK!!
 
but 7 is odd... then again the one channel could be used for something else (Cordless Eyetoy or something)
Cordless BlueTooth Eyetoy would be awesome.

I'm still somewhat skeptical myself about the impending wireless age. Seems like if everyone goes wireless we'll have a lot of cross signal contamination. Its one reason I'm happy Sony went with BlueTooth for the controllers, less stuff on the overused 2.4ghz RF channels that so many other things already run over.
 
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