DualSense Unveiled by Sony as the Official PlayStation 5 Controller

Sony has revealed the DualSense, the PlayStation 5’s very different-looking standard controller, with some pictures and description at the PlayStation.Blog. The DualSense ditches the DualShock brand name and looks like it was grabbed straight out of an alien ship. It’s clear that Sony is targeting immersion with the PlayStation 5, especially with new haptic feedback in the controller, but let’s hope this thing has a much longer battery life.

PlayStation Senior Vice President, Platform Planning & Management Hideaki Nishino shared the following:

We had a great opportunity with PS5 to innovate by offering game creators the ability to explore how they can heighten that feeling of immersion through our new controller. This is why we adopted haptic feedback, which adds a variety of powerful sensations you’ll feel when you play, such as the slow grittiness of driving a car through mud. We also incorporated adaptive triggers into the L2 and R2 buttons of DualSense so you can truly feel the tension of your actions, like when drawing a bow to shoot an arrow.

Despite past design documents pointing at the controller offering little change from the DualShock 4 in terms of visual design, PlayStation 5’s controller will have many smaller differences that add up to something new. Aside from minimizing and moving the light bar to be topside, the controller has also been given a built-in microphone, and the Share button has been removed in favor of a likely similar “Create” button. The company says it will have more to share on that last feature as it gets “closer to launch,” which Sony President and CEO Jim Ryan reiterates is still holiday 2020.

Sony doesn’t seem to be afraid to take a new direction with its controller, so one can only wonder how the console will look when paired with this new DualSense design.