DualShock 4 – too traditional?

The PlayStation 4 joypad was originally going to be a much stranger and more innovative controller, as Sony describes the design process that lead to the DualShock 4.

Sony has admitted it originally tested a controller layout for the DualShock 4 based on the current Xbox 360 joypad, before settling for the more traditional design of the final version.

‘For the analogue sticks we did test having the analogue sticks on top, since the Xbox has the left side on top [above the D-pad]. Especially from the shooter teams — we got feedback that that’s what they wanted. They knew that consumers liked the 360 for shooters,’ says Sony’s Toshimasa Aoki on website VentureBeat.



Sony also tried a layout similar to the Wii U GamePad, with the two sticks towards the top of the controller, but although they claim this ‘wouldn’t work’ there’s no real explanation for why they abandoned the Xbox 360 layout.


‘[Having the two sticks symmetrical on the left and right sides] is kind of in our DNA’, said Aoki. ‘The prototype team, myself, and also the management team really felt that having this look is the PlayStation look, and we had to keep that.’

This is what we’d assumed all along: that a misplaced sense of tradition had led to the design of the DualShock 4, and prevented a complete overhaul of the decades old design. The new controller is definitely an improvement on the PlayStation 3 model, but as we described in our recent hands-on feature we feel it’s still inferior to the Xbox 360 controller.

The article also hints at far stranger designs, including controllers with no buttons or with unusual round shapes. Although Sony refuses to release any images of the prototypes the descriptions are reminiscent of some of the abandoned ideas for Nintendo’s Wii controller, which it’s equally hard to imagine were ever intended for serious use.

‘At the very start, we were thinking of drastically changing the controller,’ says Aoki. ‘We tried out new devices, changing the form factor. We’d start from there and then try to talk to the game teams and tweak toward what the best form would be to have for those new devices. So we made, I don’t know, more than 20 prototypes. Some had no buttons, just touch panels. Some were rounded. All this crazy stuff.’

Is this the sort of weirdness Sony was coming up with?

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