Sony’s revealed lots of interesting new info on the PS5 lately, with the most notable and most recent new detail on the next gen console being that its controller will be replacing the industry standard rumble with something much more advanced- haptic feedback. In theory, it’s something that can have a tangible effect on the way players interact with games, and if done right, it can lead to much better immersion, among other things.
One developer who’s quite excited about this feature in particular is Alexis Corominas, game director at Piccolo Studio, developers of the upcoming narrative adventure title Arise: A Simple Story. Speaking in an interview with GamingBolt, Corominas said that haptic feedback in PS5’s controller is something he’s personally much more excited about that raw processing power or more memory, because unlike those things, haptic-enabled controllers can, in his own words, “offer new ways of interaction with the player.”
“This is the thing I’m personally more excited about, more than raw processing numbers,” Corominas told GamingBolt. “More memory or more CPU at the end is a quantitative improvement, while the Haptic enabled controllers sound like the kind of qualitative step forward that can offer new ways of interaction with the player, it opens a lot of doors on how to tell things.”
Corominas also spoke to us about other aspects of the PS5 and what it will offer, such as its backward compatibility, which Sony recently mentioned was still in development. As per Corominas, backward compatibility is not only great for small and mid-sized studios – seeing as their catalog of titles instantly becomes available to broader audiences – but also to players as well, especially those who make most of their purchases digitally.
“It’s great news for small and medium sized studios, because you can instantly offer your content to a broader audience,” he said. “And from a player perspective it is also great, of course, most of my games are digital purchases, and I would love to have them available on a new console from day one.”
The PS5 is confirmed to be launching during Holiday 2020, so we’ll see how well it implements these features, and how much of an impact they have. Meanwhile, Piccolo Studio’s Arise: A Simple Story is out for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on December 3rd. In this very interview, Corominas also spoke to us about the possibility of Switch port for the game- read more on that through here. Our full interview with Corominas will be live soon, so stay tuned.