FPS creators consulted on DualShock 4 design; Testing OK’d parallel sticks

Sony says that major FPS creators” were consulted on the design of the PS4’s DualShock 4 joypad.

The company has also defended its decision to stick with the now traditional DualShock configuration of having both thumbsticks in parallel – a contrast with Microsoft’s preferred offset design for Xbox.

We sent out prototypes to major FPS creators,” chief PS4 architect Mark Cerny told IGN. We looked at the top-selling titles, if they were people we could talk to, we began sending over a stream of controllers.

And we would ask them things like concavity or convexity, or trigger pressure, or trigger location, or accuracy, or the like. It was extremely helpful to have the designers of some of the top FPS’ on our controller design project.

We made and tested a ridiculously broad style of controllers and we would actually have people play games with them. And the current controller design came out of that. We did indeed conclude that the two joysticks on the same level works perfectly well. That did come out of our testing.”