i agree with noc, my first impression of the "touch pad" was that it was an lcd readout with just nothing displayed at the moment. it has a very glossy screen-like look to it.

this would gel with other rumors i'd heard about your psn account being linked to your controller, so you could access your stuff on a friends console just by syncing your controller to it. (maybe not whole games, but say stat tracking and trophy progress? but again, rumor so i dunno) for a system like that the controller would need some way to provide a minimum level of feedback even when NOT connected to a console. like a basic text screen?

i never had a dreamcast, but a friend did and some games did involve the tiny lcd screen on the memory card, yes. if i'm remembering correctly, madden games could use it for play selection so you're buddy on the couch couldn't look at your half of the screen, and one of the sonic games used it as like a tamogachi pet for one of it's minigames. (which while not my cup of tea, is technically impressive. the memory card served as it's own "game" even when not connected to the console OR the controller?)


of course i may be mistaken, like i said i never had one myself.