When MS released that video recently talking about the new controller, and they had a follow up series of articles around the web, including that great detailed one on Kotaku, I have to say that it is the first time I’m actually now leaning towards canceling my PS4 pre-order and keeping my Xbox pre-order instead. But that’s not fair to Sony, since they’ve had radio silence for a while. When they do start talking again about the PS4, I really hope they go into details about the improvements on the PS4 controller.
Why? Well, we’ve been over it in this thread a few times, right? Any time the Kinect comes up, people say “hey, pressing a button on a controller for most things is a lot easier”, and the truth of the matter is that the gamer’s relationship with that controller is the deepest one on any console. That’s your gateway into games on the system. That’s going to be over 95% of the interactions with games even if the Kinect 2.0 is a success. You’re still going to be using that controller all the time, and the better the controller is, the better the game experience is likely to be.
One of the main reasons why I feel like my game experiences on Microsoft console during the last two generations were so much better than on Sony’s is because of their controllers. There are some notable exceptions: I feel like Sony’s controller was way better for games like SSX where I needed all four shoulder buttons to be shoulder buttons, not triggers. And there were certain genres where the lack of accuracy on the analog sticks and triggers wasn’t a factor, like in platformers. But for most games where I felt precision was important, the Xbox controllers were so much better. Honestly if Sony’s platforms didn’t exist I probably wouldn’t even have thought much about the Xbox controllers: that’s how good they were most of the time. I’d just forget about them. If I wanted to aim at something, I’d aim at it without thinking. If I wanted to accelerate my vehicle only enough that I wouldn’t lose traction, I’d hold down the trigger just enough to give that amount of gas. The controller was a way for me to communicate with the game, and I thought about the game, not about how I was interfacing with it. But the controller was brought into my consciousness again and again on Sony’s consoles. Every single time I tried aiming at an enemy in the Uncharted games (which was a LOT), I couldn’t help but think about the controller instead of the game, and how I couldn’t line up my headshots the way I wanted to. Every time a Gran Turismo game wanted precision from me while braking or accelerating, I was reminded of the controller, and how tough it was to get it to do what I wanted it to do.
And the controller is going to be pretty much set in stone for the whole generation. The last generation showed that through software updates, we can see complete overhauls of the interface and how we interact with the console on screen. But with the exception of the Dualshock on the Playstation, we rarely see the introduction of a new controller during the console’s lifespan. That’s the controller that games are going to be made for. It’s the single most important thing, IMHO, about any generation of game consoles.
And to know that I will be able to use any Xbox One controller on the PC starting next year sometime? That’s just a great bonus. PC Gaming has diversified so much now that game makers can assume PC gamers will have access to a 360 controller or a similar controller. It’s not like the old days when I used to laugh at the idea of a platformer on the PC, with shoehorned keyboard and mouse support that was so unsatisfying.
So yes, I’m leaning towards Xbox for the first time since the announcements. But I also secretly hope that we’ll soon get some detailed news about how much better the PS4 controller is, and how we’ll also be able to hook it up to our PCs and have it just work. And I hope there’s some way we’ll be able to get our hands on both these controllers before launch. Demo units at a local Best Buy is probably our best hope, right?
