This year saw the unlikely launch of three next generation systems: two from Microsoft in the form of the Xbox Series X and Series S and one from Sony with the PS5. All saw their pros and their cons and as usual, the fanboys smelt that sweet and beautiful blood of a console wars born anew. But the boss of Xbox actually tipped his hat to the main competitor for one feature.
While the Xbox Series controller is largely the same as the Xbox One controller just with some minor tweaks (which plays into Microsoft’s plans of backward and forward compatibility going into this generation), Sony went the other direction. The PS5’s controller, dubbed the DualSense, was the most radical redesign for a PlayStation controller since the PS1 and has a lot of different new features such as adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, which is being implemented in various different ways in various different games.
Speaking with The Verge, Phil Spencer seems to be a fan of the new controller. He said he applauds what Sony did with the DualSense and thinks that everyone in the industry can take bits and pieces from each other, even calling back to the Wii having a major impact on Microsoft with their Kinect project.
“I applaud what they did with the controller, not actually for–well, I shouldn’t say not for the specifics of the controller, but more than just the specifics of the controller,” he said. “I think for all of us in the industry, we should learn from each other and the innovation that we all push on, whether it’s distribution of business model like Game Pass, or controller tech, or the Wii back in the day, which clearly had an impact on us when we went off and did Kinect and Sony did the Move.”
The DualSense is neat, and it’ll be interesting to see if the features continue being used in third party games after this honeymoon launch period. If they do, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to see Microsoft do their own thing with that tech in a Xbox Series controller redesign or a new Elite controller down the line.
