PS5’s Controller Boasts Adaptive Triggers and Haptic Feedback

Sony’s taking an interesting approach to revealing new information on their upcoming PlayStation 5, which we now know is coming out Holiday 2020. Rather than doing it through dedicated shows and events (what with them having skipped PSX last year and E3 this year), they’ve instead delivered it through much more understated and unconventional means. Recently, speaking with Wired, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and the PS5’s chief architect Mark Cerny revealed more new details on the PS5.

Through that piece, interesting information on the PS5’s controller also came to light. For starters, though most of us are assuming that the controller will be called DualShock 5, Sony are yet to confirm an official name for it. More important than that name, though, is what’s inside the controller and what innovations it will bring to the table- and there’s definitely some interesting stuff to look forward to.

Sony is making two key innovations with the PS5’s controller- the first of these is adaptive triggers, which will see both triggers on the controller – the L2 and R2 buttons – offering varying degrees of resistance based on the context of gameplay.

Over on the official PlayStation blog, Ryan describes it as follows: “Developers can program the resistance of the triggers so that you feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain.”

The second of the two innovations is haptic feedback, replacing the rumble we’ve had in console gamepads for years. The PS5 controller will boast “highly programmable voice-coil actuators” in its left and right grips, which will allow the controller to give players a broader range of feedback depending on what’s going on in the game.

“Crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football field,” Ryan writes on the PS blog. “You can even get a sense for a variety of textures when running through fields of grass or plodding through mud.”

Meanwhile, the Wired article also confirms that the PS5 controller will have an improved speaker as well. According to Ryan, all these improvements have the potential to combine to “produce a powerful experience that better simulates various actions.” Ryan also confirms that developers across the industry have also received early versions of the controller to work with for game development. “Game creators have started to receive early versions of the new controller, and we can’t wait to see where their imagination goes with these new features at their disposal,” he writes.

Earlier this year, Sony revealed a bunch of other new details on the PS5. We know of the console’s partial specifications, the fact that it will have a solid state drive, its support for virtual reality, and its backward compatibility support.