With only a few days away from the heavily implied showing of Sony’s next console, pictures of its controller along with juicy details flood the Internet.
So close, Sony. So very close. You were only less than a week away from pulling the curtains off the PlayStation 4/Orbis/whatever this upcoming Wednesday (February 20) without a substantial leak, but over the course of 24 hours two photos of a prototype version of the PS4’s controller have been caught by gaming sites. Drats! Better luck next time, guys.
From the first slightly blurry picture from the gaming website Destructoid, not only do we see the PS4’s development kit – as typical development kits go, this one looks nothing close to a retail version and should look quite differently upon the system’s debut next week – but also a strange controller connected via a USB 3.0 port.
That, my friends, is reportedly the PlayStation 4’s new controller. Yeah, doesn’t look crazily different from a current DualShock 3 aside from an improved directional pad and analog sticks, huh? Oh, and it’s kind of ugly and fat. But as numerous industry sources indicate, the major changes lie underneath and in spots not clearly viewable in the provided images.
Points of interest like a touchpad (not a touch screen as previously suspected) that can be pressed inward like a laptop’s touchpad, built-in PlayStation Move capability (that blue stretch of LED on top), supposedly newly designed L2 and R2 triggers, and if you glance closely at the zoomed image of the prototype above, two mysterious rectangles of unknown use on opposite ends of the controller’s touchpad.
What are they? There’s been a lot of interesting suggestions so far, from stereo depth cameras, start & select buttons, and even the much talked about “Share” function that allegedly allows players to easily video record or image capture on-screen gameplay to then be broadcasted to online friends, but nothing concrete.
Let’s move on to our second picture. This one anonymously produced by the Game Trailers forums and appears to be taken more recently; at least that’s what first impressions might lead you to believe as this PS4 controller prototype comes across in way better shape and form than the previous one.
Hmm, and is that a 3.5.mm audio jack I spy below the PS button? Certainly looks like it.
Of courser, being a prototype controller, we can only certify a number of things based off these pictures. During the development cycle of a console, aspects like controllers go through tons of iterations, so without knowing when these pictures were taken – reportedly a long time ago – either we might be looking at the PS4’s controller or last year’s thrown in the incinerator model.
I’ve probably already mentioned this guideline before in past occasions when discussing rumored prototypes and the like, but its just to make clear what’s real and what’s 100 percent full-grade bull-crap. Ahem, pardon my French y’all.
This upcoming Wednesday at the stroke of 6 p.m. we should finally lay to rest all this loosey-goosey scuttlebutt and get some actual facts, when hopefully Sony shows off the PlayStation 4. Stay tuned to Walyou for impending news about that, 10 brilliant Batman graffiti works, and the possibility of an iWatch.
