PlayStation 4 Controller Has Concave Triggers

Over on the PlayStation blog, they’ve posted some proper pictures of the new DualShock 4 controller for the PlatStation. And praise to the gamer gods, the triggers finally face the right way!

Look at that concave bend. It’s surely a thing of beauty. No more will our trigger fingers slide off those ridiculous buttons in a tense moment. No more will I accidentally grenade myself in the face because I tried to shoot with R2, as per the Xbox 360 controller instead of R1. The bendy, rubbishy grip triggers are NO MORE!

The body itself is larger and curved as well. I wasn’t a PS1 gamer. I never developed that ridiculous claw grip that you need to hold a controller designed for a child’s hands.

I’m probably one of the few people who was sad when Sony reverted from the PS3 banana controller design, not because I liked it (let’s face it, that thing is hideous), but because there was something to actually hold. This new Dualshock offers a longer, thicker grip that a girl can really wrap her hands around. I like it.

Up on the top you have the PS Move light and if you squint closely on the big version of the pic you can see the headset jack sitting below it to awkwardly drape your headset cable over or under the controller itself. The PS4 comes bundled with a headset but there’s also a speaker built into the controller, for reasons.

I’m not sure how or why they’d move away from the nice handle-like design of the Move controllers because WHERE IS MY LIGHTSABER GAME? but I guess no one bought Move controllers anyway, except people who wanted to play JS Joust. And me, because I liked wielding the sword and shield in Sports Champions for all of about two minutes. I believe Move controllers will still be supported, so there’s hope for my lightsaber yet.

On front, we have the exciting touchpad thing that should help cross-compatibility for Vita games. Okay, it’s not that exciting. The d-pad apparently matches that on the Vita as well, which I hear is exciting for some people who aren’t me. The dual analogue sticks are still in that annoying central position, though that’s still better than the Wii U Gamepad’s placement. You’ll see they’ve gone with a convex centre and a dip with a ridge around the edge. Now, that concerned me a little. We all know that ridges have a tendency to gather gunk and need to be cleared out pretty frequently. I hope that doesn’t become the case here.

You can also see that they’ve dispensed with the Start button. Instead, we have Options, which is what the Start button did anyway and it now combines it with the Select button. In other words, it probably brings up in-game menus, as things marked Options tend to do.

Rich talked about the benefits of online social integration this morning and over on the left of the touchpad you can see the prominent Share button. During the conference, Sony announced partnerships with Facebook and UStream, so uploading to those platforms is probably a given. I do hope they provide ways to support others though – I quite like Twitch.tv for streaming and would much rather upload clips to YouTube.

Finally, we have the PlayStation Move camera.

It’s a Kinect, LOL. Look, it goes up and down and everything.

Okay, not really. The dual cameras work with the Move light to track in 3D space, rather than the infra-red used my Microsoft to detect humans. This PS4 peripheral also has 4 microphones to accurately determine sound origins. It could be something that developers have fun with? I’m suddenly very interested in how Microsoft will try to compete.

Also, CONCAVE TRIGGERS!

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