DualSense: Sony presents its new PS5 controller

In order to keep our excitement levels high, Sony released the first details about the PS5’s new controller. Every new PlayStation has seen an upgraded DualShock controller.

Sony, however, decided to change the name of the Playstation 5 (PS5) controller to fit in with its focus on in-game feedback. The new controller goes by DualSense.

DualSense: Divided opinion

The design of the new controller has polarised opinion. The DualSense will be the first controller to sport a two-colour design with the featured controller white and black.

Whether you love or hate the new design – which bears a more than passing resemblance to a stormtrooper helmet and that always gets a win my book – the controller design is sleek with clean and uncluttered look.

It’s certainly not hard on the eye, but it definitely looks like it means business with very little in the way of bells and whistles. The lightbar has been dispensed with on the back of the controller.

DualSense features

The light is now around the touchpad, which feels much more integrated into the design rather than tacked onto the back. As mentioned the touchpad is still there, and Sony have renamed the share button the create button.

The shape of the controller seems to have moved a little closer to the Xbox design. Aesthetically, while it has been compared to a stormtrooper helmet, the design fits quite nicely with the existing PS VR unit and also reminds me a bit of AstroBot for some reason.

The new DualSense controller is heavily aimed at improving immersion. The controllers’ new features look to give game developers more ways of making the DualSense controller complement the on-screen action.

To do this, the controller features more localized vibration to make the controllers haptic feedback more precise. The DualShock haptic feedback has never been the Playstation’s most robust feature with the controller response relatively limited.

In addition to the haptic feedback, the R2 and L2 will be adaptive triggers for the first time. This means that developers will be able to program the amount of resistance the triggers will give.

Bringing a game to life

The addition of adaptive triggers is a huge move forward and in future games will be able to simulate the feeling of pulling back the string of a bow or giving different cars throttle pedals different characteristics.

“Our goal with DualSense is to give gamers the feeling of being transported into the game world as soon as they open the box. We want gamers to feel like the controller is an extension of themselves when they’re playing; so much so that they forget that it’s even in their hands.”

The PlayStation blog teased that we can look forward to the actual console reveal soon-ish. I would imagine it is now almost definitely going to be black and white.

The new design isn’t for everyone,;but we are another step closer to finally seeing Sony’s next console can’t possibly be uglier than Microsoft’s mini-fridge-looking Xbox Series X, can it?