Sony Appears to File Patent for PlayStation 5 DualShock Controller

Via the Japanese Patent Office, Sony’s anticipated DualShock 5 has a few notable differences to the PlayStation 4’s controller.

Author:

Ben Chopping

Started off as a sports writer with a focus on football, ice hockey, boxing, and American football. After leaving RealSport, I diversified my writing substantially, kept with sport, but also learned much more heavily into pop culture, iGaming, travel, business, tech, and especially gaming. Later, I co-founded Outsider Gaming, was the primary writer and editor-in-chief, and helped to train and bring on the writing talents who also had a passion for gaming. Now, I’m writing everything and anything, from sports to gaming, SEO-optimised content to reviews and previews.

Published on: Nov 20, 2019 | Updated on: Apr 24, 2023

Image Source: Pixabay

Recorded by the Japan Patent Office on 18 November 2019, Sony has filed a patent for a new controller, which many are quite safely assuming is for the PlayStation 5 and expect to be called the DualShock 5. As such, PlayStation fans the world over can now have a rough glimpse at the device that they shall use to trawl through the worlds of PlayStation’s incredible range of games on their next-gen console.

Here is the perspective view of the controller from the patent filed by Sony:

Image Source: J-Patplat

As you can see, the controller looks very much the same to the DualShock 4 from this angle. The patent does, however, describe that all dash lines on the drawings are only the boundaries between parts, so the design within the boundaries may yet differ from that of the most recent PlayStation controllers. That said, it’s a given that the iconic button symbols will stay the same. The most noticeable difference from an aesthetics standpoint comes from its plan view.

Will the light show conclude?

A nice little feature of the DualShock 4 has been the light bar between the bumpers and triggers. With its changing colours to react to various game occurrences, it adds more stimuli away from the screen while gaming. But it seems as though Sony will be doing away with this feature, with the patent excluding a light bar, as shown below:

Image Source: J-Patplat

As noted by T3, the removal of the light bar suggests that the PlayStation 5 will not feature virtual reality gaming, for the light bar’s primary purpose was for tracking with PSVR. It could also mean, however, that Sony is creating a second generation of VR for the new console or that the console will be backwards compatible with its hardware as well as the PS4 games library.

It’s what’s on the inside that counts

Despite the build of the controller being very-much the same as the current generation’s controller, the DualShock 5 – if that is indeed its name – is set to feature a great deal of internal changes. Released to the PlayStation Blog earlier this year, the two biggest changes coming to the controller are the infusion of haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.

The haptic feedback will replace the rumble technology present in the DualShock 4, which will allow for a greater range of motions to come through the device. They use the example of running through fields of grass feeling much different from plodding through some mud in a game. In the patents for the new controller, the triggers are a little larger, possibly as a result of them being these adaptive triggers which developers can program as having more or less resistance depending on the gameplay at hand.

Still a year away from the PlayStation 5’s release, which is expected to be around this time (mid-to-late November) next year, we’ll undoubtedly be gradually fed more details about the new controller as we get closer to the launch of the next generation of consoles.

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