The DualShock 4
While controllers over
the life of the PlayStation brand have generally been the same on the
outside, Sony has made some good changes to this iteration of it's
controller both inside and out.
The Dualshock Hardware
The
DualShock 4 displays the same general layout and buttons as past
DualShock controllers, but now the controller offers additional features
along with new buttons. The most obvious change is the inclusion of a
wide touchpad where the Select and Start button were; those buttons are
now replaced with an Options button instead. Sony has mentioned that the
touchpad can respond to up to two fingers at a time, which expands the
number of possibilities for input to those like you would see on a
smartphone. In addition, the DualShock 4 sports a 3.5-mm headphone
jack that supports surround sound along with both an accelerometer and a
gyroscope, both reported to be better than what is currently included
in the DualShock 3 and Vita. The two rumble motors can now have varying
strength, a change from the DualShock 3 where rumble was either active
or not. This will create a heightened sense of realism in all
PlayStation 4 games. The DualShock 4 also includes a built-in speaker,
meaning that sounds from the game can play through the controller
instead of your normal speakers.
Atop
the device is a light bar that can pick up and detect movement, making
the controller something like a mixture between a DualShock and a
PlayStation Move. According to Sony, the light bar can display one of
three different LED colors to relay information; for example, if a
player is low on health and may die in the game, the light bar may relay
this information with the appropriate color. This could be a nice
replacement to the current method most games use, such as tinting the
screen red as the player loses health. The light bar will also light up
corresponding to the player's controller: blue, red, pink and green
corresponding to player one through four, respectively. Additional
features the light bar offers include the ability to track players, even
going so far as to reorganize the split screens in a multiplayer game
when the physical order of the players has changed.