With many of us spending more time gaming during the lockdown, Sony has announced the specs for the upcoming PlayStation 5 and its controller.
With the UK on lockdown and much of Northern Ireland's tech sector working from home for the foreseeable future, many are using online gaming as a way to stay in touch with friends and de-stress. Sales of video games have jumped this month, and the World Health Organisation has even teamed up with gaming organisations to encourage people to stay home and play through its #PlayApartTogether programme.
All eyes have been on Sony lately since the announcement of its upcoming PlayStation 5 game console last month, which it expects to ship in December for the Christmas period. The console's announced specs are pretty impressive, with an expandable solid-state disk, a GPU supporting real-time raytracing, a powerful processor capped at 3.5GHz, and a custom 3D audio processor. The console has been confirmed to be backward compatible with the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro, meaning you can play your old games on it too.
Today Sony announced the final piece of the puzzle with the reveal of the PlayStation 5's new controller: The DualSense. The new wireless controller expands on the iconic DualShock design with a few nice improvements, including a built-in microphone, a lighter battery, and a more compact design.
The goal with the controller is to give game developers the tools to increase immersion in their games. The DualSense features haptic feedback that developers can use to change the feeling of the controls depending on their game type, and the L2 and R2 buttons have adaptive trigger tech that can be used to customise the tension and release on triggers for different weapon types. The "Share" button has also been replaced with a new "Create" button feature that Sony will be revealing separately.
Sony Interactive Entertainment's President & CEO Jim Ryan commented on the announcement: "DualSense marks a radical departure from our previous controller offerings and captures just how strongly we feel about making a generational leap with PS5. The new controller, along with the many innovative features in PS5, will be transformative for games – continuing our mission at PlayStation to push the boundaries of play, now and in the future. To the PlayStation community, I truly want to thank you for sharing this exciting journey with us as we head toward PS5’s launch in Holiday 2020. We look forward to sharing more information about PS5, including the console design, in the coming months."
Source: PlayStation Blog
