Since the PS3, DualShock controllers have had a nice round start button located between the analog discs that you can easily press to quickly return to the console’s main menu. DualSense on the PS5 changes that. I hate it.
Instead of a small thickness of acrylic with the PlayStation logo, the DualSense home button is a full PlayStation logo in miniature. It barely rises above the surface of the plastic; you don’t immediately hear the button as your thumb rolls down the bottom of the driver looking for it and the edges puncture you once you finally do. It’s camouflaged in black, almost as if the most important button on the controller, the one that turns on the console and lets you out of games, doesn’t want to find it, or use it, let alone enjoy it.
Look, redesigns are always a hard pill to swallow, especially when they’re still on the back of some pretty decent ones you’ve gotten used to a lot. I spent seven years with the DualShock 4 and the PS4 menu system, neither of which I loved, but both have taken on a family warmth after thousands of hours of treating them as extensions of my own mind. and my body. A couple of months after the life of the PS5, its weird design choices still bother me. I don’t see that overcoming things like the DualSense home button doesn’t immediately take me to the home screen and the button itself is presented more as an iconographic style piece than as a handy interface.
I am not alone either. This is how Kotaku freelance publisher i Rock, paper, shotgun co-founder John Walker told me about Slack DMs:
What throws me off is that it looks like a brand, not a means of interaction. Several times I’ve completely forgotten that it’s a button, and then I’ve assumed that the reason I can’t find the menus I’m looking for is because of the complete clutter of its new board, rather than having forgotten a whole other subsection of its overlay. Möbius interface.
I agree that this makes little sense on my part: it’s in exactly the same place as the round button marked “PS” on the previous controller, so I don’t really have a good excuse. But hey, there’s something so weird about this peculiar relief glyph now. His semiotics screams “DON’T HURRY ME!”, Even before he gets to the nasty thing that is like tactile interaction.
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The button is also a big news when it comes to customizing DualSense. Kotaku recently, senior reporter Mike Fahey had the Moder Colerware driver send him a pink and black covered DualSense. The thing looks very sharp and talks about the flexibility when it comes to customizing the PS5 controller, except the home button. “The only downside to customizing the DualSense driver is that you really can’t do much with this damn PlayStation logo button,” he wrote. “No matter what color you paint, it’s still what it is.”
The rest of the controller is excellent. The triggers are so ergonomic that I sometimes forget I’m pulling them off, except when the haptic feedback is activated and I can feel the growing tension as I arch backwards. Astro games room. Grip feels better than the DualShock 3 or 4. The reduced light bar provides energy-saving relief. Analog sticks feel more substantial, though time will tell if they really hold up better than their predecessors.
In so many ways, the DualSense is a monumental step compared to the last generation. Too bad the button I touch first every time I turn on the machine is not one. Maybe Sony will fix it with a DualSense Pro.