Sony’s controller price increase highlights the PS5’s biggest problem

A dozen PS4 controllers grow dusty on my shelves for no good reason

Sony

Yesterday, Sony quietly rolled out a price hike for its PS5 DualSense controllers, with the basic colors jumping up $5, and the slightly fancier colors increasing by $10. It’s a fairly modest increase, and in statements to the press, the company revealed that the jump was because of the “rising cost of production.” Fair enough, I guess, but this latest price increase – one of many for the PS5 and its accessories – highlights the PS5’s biggest problem: the lack of DualShock 4 support. 

To be clear, the PS5 does technically support DualShock 4 controllers, which were the controllers used for the PS4. I mean, why wouldn’t it? It’s a standard Bluetooth controller, it was made by Sony, it shares 90% of its features with the DualSense. And you can use it on the PS5, but only in PS4 games — not PS5 games, though. Never PS5 games. And frankly, that’s a load of BS.

Sony says that the reason for forcing the use of the DualSense in PS5 games is somewhat technical in nature. According to the company’s PS5 FAQ, PS5 games use the “immersive” new features on the DualSense, so it simply wouldn’t make sense to allow DualShock 4 controllers, which are lacking in these features. 

“PS5 games will require use of the DualSense wireless controller, as they have been designed to take advantage of its immersive new features.” 

But let’s take stock. Both the DualShock 4 and the DualSense feature two analog sticks, four face buttons, a d-pad, two bumpers, and two triggers. They both have a capture and an options button, a touchpad, a home button, a speaker, and a 3.5mm headset port. In terms of input, the only difference between the two is that the DualSense has a built-in microphone, but this is easily sidestepped on the DualShock 4 by just plugging in a headset, and only a few games, like Astro Bot, even use the microphone in gameplay. Even then, simply muting the microphone skips those sections. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these both have the same amount of buttons / Sony

“But what about feedback?” I hear you ask. “The DualSense has linear rumble motors and adaptive triggers!” 

And sure, that’s true. But neither of those features are necessary for any PS5 game. There’s not a single PS5 game that absolutely requires them. And do you know why that is? Because you can turn both of those features off at the system level. So while Sony says that PS5 games are “designed to take advantage of its immersive new features,” there’s a big difference between taking advantage of a feature and requiring it, and the PS5 definitely does not require it. Sony’s excuse just doesn’t stack up. 

There’s an accessibility issue at play here, too. For some players, not only is the DualShock 4 more comfortable than the DualSense, it might even be the only way they can play. And that’s to say nothing of the custom solutions and third-party controllers that enabled more accessibility options on the PS4, all of which are now entirely unusable in PS5 games. Sony says it’s serious about accessibility, and the PlayStation Access controller is a genuinely great piece of kit, but accessibility is about more than just one specific controller — it’s about offering as many options as possible, and locking off an entire ecosystem of controllers is about as far from that as you can get. 

You want to know the worst part, though? You can already play PS5 games with a DualShock 4 controller, officially too. The DualShock 4 is one of the very few controllers that’s officially compatible with PS Remote Play, and it doesn’t discriminate — you can use a DualShock 4 to play PS5 games, or a DualSense to play PS4 games, and it all works with absolutely no issues. You just plug it into your PC or pair it via Bluetooth to your phone, and you’re good to go. But that comes with its own problems, like the latency introduced, the lower resolution, the iffy performance depending on your network environment, and those compromises aren’t a fair solution. 

There’s another way to use PS4 controllers on PS5, too, and it doesn’t require you to use Remote Play… but it’s only in a few games. Most fighting games on PS5 have wired PS4 controllers whitelisted, so they can be used on the PS5 just fine, albeit only while connected via a cable. This is presumably so fighting game players don’t have to shell out for another expensive fight stick – those things can cost a pretty penny – when they’ve already got a perfectly good one. But you know what else is perfectly good? The half-dozen DualShock 4 controllers sitting on my shelf, gathering dust because they’re needlessly blocked on the system Sony wants me to use. It’s clear that this isn’t a technical problem, it’s an ideological problem. 

So why did Sony do this? There’s only really one possible reason: money. If you own a PS5, and you want to play a local multiplayer game, you have to buy a new controller. You have to buy a DualSense. If you and a friend want to go head-to-head in Tekken 8, you have to buy another DualSense. If the whole family wants to play Sackboy: A New Adventure together, you’ll have to buy three more DualSense controllers, even if you have a dozen perfectly good DualShock 4s lying around. And thanks to this new price increase, doing so just got more expensive. 

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