Since the PS3, DualShock controllers have a nice round home button nestled between the analog levers that you can easily press to quickly return to the console’s main menu. The PS5 DualSense changes that. I hate that.
Instead of a small piece of acrylic with the PlayStation logo, the DualSense home button is an entire miniature PlayStation logo. It is barely above the surface of the plastic; you don’t feel the button immediately when your thumb rubs the bottom of the controller looking for it, and the edges nudge you when you finally do. It is camouflaged in black, almost as if the most important button on the controller – the one that turns on the console and allows you to leave the games – did not want to be found, or used, or at least appreciated.
Look, redesigns are always a hard pill to swallow, especially when they appear on the backs of reasonably decent ones that you are extremely used to. I spent seven years with DualShock 4 and the PS4 menu system, neither of which I loved, but both acquired a familiar warmth after thousands of hours treating them as extensions of my own mind and body. After a few months of PS5 life, its weird design choices still bother me. I don’t see how to overcome things like the DualSense home button by not taking me immediately to the home screen, and the button itself is more of an iconographic touch than a practical interface, anytime soon.
I’m not alone, too. see how Kotaku freelance editor and Stone, paper, shotgun co-founder John Walker put this to me through Slack DMs:
What surprises me is that it looks like a brand, not a means of interaction. Several times I completely forgot that it is a button, so I assumed that the reason I can’t find the menus I’m looking for is because of the complete mess of its new panel, rather than having forgotten another entire subsection of its Interface Möbius overlay.
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 really don’t have a good excuse. But, wow, there is something so powerfully strange that this peculiar glyph of relief is now. His semiotics screams “DON’T PRESS ME!”, Before you even realize how unpleasant it is as a tactile interaction.
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The button is also a great buzzkill when it comes to DualSense customization. Kotaku Senior reporter Mike Fahey recently had the Colerware controller modder send him a DualSense decorated in pink and black. It looks very sharp and speaks with flexibility when it comes to customizing your PS5 controller – except for the home button. “The only downside to customizing the DualSense controller is that you really can’t do much with that damn PlayStation logo button,” he wrote. “No matter what color you paint, it is still what it is.”
The rest of the controller is excellent. The triggers are so ergonomic that I sometimes forget that I’m pulling them, except when tactile feedback is activated and I can feel the tension building as I pull an arc in. Astro’s Playroom. The grip is better than the DualShock 3 or 4 ever did. The light bar being reduced is a relief for saving energy. Analog controls seem more substantial, although time will tell if they really work better than their chintzy predecessors.
In many ways, DualSense is a monumental step over the last generation. Too bad the button I touch first every time I turn on my machine is not one of them. Perhaps Sony will fix this with a DualSense Pro.