NeoGAF

On its face, having the ability to use a controller instead of finicky and often imprecise touchscreen controls is any gamer's dream. Devs we spoke with were generally pleased that they have the option to offer controller support.

"We love the idea, since everyone (including us) hates touchscreen controls," says Seth Coster, co-founder at Butterscotch Shenanigans.

"I like the idea of it and what it can bring to the mobile gaming experience," says Mike Lu, vice president of product at Gree.

"My immediate reaction to it is that when it works, it works well," adds Kevin Kuenstler, Producer at one of Sega's mobile teams, speaking about Moga's controller.

That's all well and good, but the inherent problem in games built for mobile is that they still have to be designed with touchscreen controls in mind first and foremost.

"If a game has to factor in both touchscreen and controller-based inputs, I believe it will just end up compromising both the touchscreen and controller-based gaming experience. The alternative (having two separate versions of the game, one to cater for each input system) is not feasible either, from a development costs standpoint," notes Wicked Dog Games producer Jeffrey Lim.

Paul Johnson, managing director at Rubicon, agrees that it's a pretty serious limitation. "I've always believed you should develop to a platform's strengths, so make a dedicated shooter for a dedicated controller, or a tap and drag game for a touchscreen. Trying to do both is a recipe for failure. I'll revise this position when I hear of the first of these companies to sell 10 million units," he says.

According to Coster, it's a complicated situation for developers that really like the idea of controller support. "It's not limiting per se, but it does cause problems. When you design for a touchscreen, you have very different parameters of how to structure the game. For example, if your GUI is designed to be tapped, or to have things be dragged from one place to another, one of the few options with a controller would be to have an on-screen 'cursor' that is controlled with the joystick, which is far less intuitive. It's very very difficult to make a game that plays well with both touch and physical buttons," he explains.

"To top it off, your interface is much more cumbersome when you have touchscreen controls, and it has a higher tendency to block the view of the gameplay, so you have to build that into the design. When you switch to a controller, you don't need all that stuff on screen, but if the game is designed to have those things there, removing them might make things look weird and require a bunch of tweaking. Overall it's just a pain to try to accommodate both options at once."