Sean W. Gibson / Jul 31st, 2012

Nyko is a name familiar with most gamers as they make peripherals for all sorts of gaming platforms. We had the opportunity to get some face time with Nyko’s Marketing Manager, Bernard Hoang, to discuss the new PlayPad and PlayPad protechnologies that were on the floor at the recent E3 2012 show in Los Angeles.

GI: Sean Gibson, Gaming Illustrated here at the Nyko booth. I’m here with Bernard Hoang. Could you talk about your role with Nyko and why we’re here?

Bernard: Yeah, I’m Marketing Manager at Nyko and today we’re actually showing off two controllers that we have for Android tablets. As you can see here we’ve got the PlayPad and the PlayPad Pro which is a full-fledged console-like controller. The cool things about these controllers we’re actually teamed up with NVIDIA to make these controllers. So NVIDIA uses a protocol they’re making all their publishers use for controllers, it’s called their HID protocol, so we built that into our controller. So any game that you download from the TegraZone from Google Play will work with our controller right out of the box. So we don’t need to configure any buttons, we don’t need to remap anything, it just works right away. A cool thing about this, as well, we have our own app that’s out for the controllers for all old games and backwards compatible games. So say, you know, you have an old game that is not found in the TegraZone, you can actually remap the controller to that as well, and then we have software where you can actually remap our controllers on the screen, so for any game that does only touchscreen events, you can actually use that on our controller for that as well.

GI: I mean, this is an interesting extension of where I was six months ago with CES where I was talking to NVIDIA about their tablet technology, and I am looking at it right now, console-level graphics on a tablet, but my thing was the interface. I need something better than just my grubby fingers with pizza sauce all over the screen, so I appreciate the intelligence that went into what you’ve done here, and so for Android tablets, this is plug-less and play I suppose?

Bernard: It works with any Android tablet that’s an Android 3.0 or higher, so yeah it’s just plug and play pretty much, or you sync through a Bluetooth and you just play right away, so you don’t need to do anything else. The configurations are all done for you.

GI: So the PlayPad is the smaller of the two. Is it just a size difference or is there a distinct distinction between the two of the new units that you’ve debuted?

Bernard: Well, the PlayPad of course, you know, the PlayPad Pro is for if you plug your tablet onto your big screen at home, you sit back on your couch and you use that to play. The PlayPad comes with a carrying case and a stand for your tablets when you’re on the go with it. You just slap your tablet on the stand and then you’re good to go. And it’s really small so it fits right in your bag so you don’t have like a big bulky controller with you the whole time.

GI: I get it, so PlayPad on the road, mobile, lightweight, comes with a stand. Whereas the PlayPad Pro looks and feels like a traditional, almost a PS3 controller, but it’s still lightweight, but this is when your tablets plugged into your big screen.

Bernard: Correct, and you know it has all the buttons. It has two analog sticks, d-pads, all the buttons, shoulder buttons and trigger buttons as well, so a full-fledged controller. Same with the mini one, we don’t get rid of any of the buttons. They’re all in there as well.

GI: You talked a bit about your partnership with NVIDIA; how important was that in developing this product? Did they come to you with the idea, did you come to them? How did that kind of develop?

Bernard: You know what, we had our own software, our own app, and we were showing it off and we had a meeting with them, and they came to us and saying, “Oh, we’re going to start using our own protocol.” And, you know, it’s NVIDIA or us so we decided just to go with NVIDIA, because of course if NVIDIA has their own protocol of course you would go with what they’re doing because they have over 50 games in their TegraZone, so any game that has their HID protocol built into it will work with our controller, which is a right move for us definitely.

GI: I also saw the application that you guys ship with that allows you to kind of remap the device to your own liking.

Bernard: Yeah, you can remap any game that uses keyboard mapping, so anybody can change what the buttons functionality, say if it’s a program to S, you can program it to the W button. As well, I told you about the on-screen touch mapping, so if the game doesn’t have, what do you call it, keyboard mapping, you can actually use the on-screen where on the left side you’ll see all our buttons and you can just drag it over and overlay it on the game itself, so pretty much, our controller is going to be compatible with most every civilian out there.

GI: You talked about release date, I think it’s August, have you guys announced price points yet?

Bernard: No price point yet, but you know, just like regular controllers out there, it will probably be around under $50 when it comes out.

GI: That’s pretty reasonable if, you know, you’re on the road a lot, you want to be playing with your tablet, this just seems like such a better idea. Why hasn’t this happened with the first tablets that came out?

Bernard: You know, a lot of controllers, I guess, companies try to brand themselves with a game that’s out there, and they’re only programmed to work with that handful of games, and many of the other publishers have different ways of formatting in how their game is controlled. We spent a lot of time our app to just get it right so everything works and then, you know, the NVIDIA thing just came perfectly at the right time and we partnered up with them. So, it takes a lot of time and developing for Androids is the way they go for right now just because it’s so open and you can do mostly anything you want, but for iOS and Windows hopefully we will have our controller and app on their tablets in the near future.

GI: Yeah, that was the next question when the iOS infrastructure and the Windows 8 infrastructure going to be adopted by you guys, but I guess it’s just a matter of time and seeing where they go and then you’ll just go with the crowd.

Bernard: Correct, yeah, you know the NVIDIA partnership, that’s our stepping stone right now, so we’re hoping to take that to the next level and hopefully iOS and Windows. So if we do partner with Apple or Microsoft in the future it will definitely take some time to port over our app and controller.

GI: Well, nice. I just want to congratulate you. This is an intelligent product I’m seeing at E3, and I appreciate the nice design and just filling a need where maybe we didn’t realize we actually needed it and I appreciate you pointing that out to us. Now I’m going to waste more money on my video game addiction.

Bernard: Great. (Laughter) Yeah, one of NVIDIA’s dreams right now is having the tablet as your console, your whole gaming console. If you’re done at-home playing you can bring it along and continue to play on the road as well, so you know, we see that in our future as well so, we’re definitely tagging along with them to see what they’re going to do in their future.

GI: All right, well thanks so much for joining us at Gaming Illustrated.

Bernard: Oh, no problem, thank you.

We’d like to thank Bernard and the team at Nyko for making time for us with this interview.

tags: android , interview , nyko , playpad , playpad pro , tablet