From the PS3, the DualShock controllers had a nice round home button placed between the analog sticks that you can easily press to quickly return to the main menu of the console. PS5’s DualSense changes that. I hate this.
Instead of a small piece of acrylic with a PlayStation logo on it, the DualSense home button is a whole miniature PlayStation logo. It is barely raised above the surface of the plastic; do not immediately feel the button as your thumb steps down the bottom of the controller looking for it, and the edges hit you once you have done so. It’s camouflaged in black, almost as if the controller’s most important button – the one that turns on the console and lets you out of games – doesn’t want to be found, used, or at least.
Look, redesigns are always a hard pill to swallow, especially when you follow the pretty decent ones you’ve gotten used to a lot. I spent seven years with DualShock 4 and the PS4 menu system, neither of which I liked, but both got a familiar warmth after thousands of hours of treating them like extensions of my own mind and body. A few months into the life of the PS5, its strange design choices still annoy me. I don’t see that overcoming things like the DualSense home button doesn’t take me to the home screen right away, and the button itself has a piece of iconographic flair rather than a practical interface soon.
Are not alone. Here’s how Kotaku independent publisher and Rock, Paper, Shotgun co-founder John Walker told me about Slack DMs:
What throws me away is that it looks like branding, not a means of interaction. Several times I completely forgot that it’s a button, then I assumed that the reason I can’t find the menus I’m looking for is because of the complete mess of its new dashboard, rather than the fact that I forgot another subsection of its overlay Möbius interface.
I agree that this doesn’t make much sense to me – it’s exactly the same place with the round button marked “PS” on the previous controller, so I don’t have a good excuse. But, Lord, there is something so strangely strange about the fact that it is now this special glyph of relief. Her semiotics screams “DON’T PRESS ME!”, Before she even reaches how unpleasant it is like a tactile interaction.
G / O Media may receive a commission
The button is also an important way when it comes to customizing DualSense. Kotaku Chief Reporter Mike Fahey recently had the Moder Colerware controller send her a pink and black DualSense. It looks pretty damn good and talks about flexibility when it comes to customizing the PS5 controller – except for the power button. “The only downside to customizing the DualSense controller is that you can’t do much with this damn PlayStation logo button,” he wrote. “No matter what color you paint, that’s all there is to it.”
The rest of the controller is excellent. The triggers are so ergonomic that I sometimes forget to pull them, unless haptic feedback is activated and I feel the tension increase as I pull a spring back. Astro playroom. Grip feels better than DualShock 3 or 4. The dimmed light bar is an energy-saving relief. Analog sticks feel more substantial, although time will tell if they really last better than their chintzy predecessors.
In so many ways, DualSense is a milestone compared to the last generation. Too bad the button I touch first every time I turn on the device is not one of them. Maybe Sony will fix it with a DualSense Pro.