[mikepurvis]

I had a PS2 slim years ago and was annoyed that it wouldn’t let me use a “dual analog” controller I had kicking around to play PS2 games, eg for second player. Seemed like an unnecessarily hostile move to force an upgrade there when all the functionality other than rumble was clearly present.

But of course it’s the same now on PS5. I still have my PS4 pads and use them to round out 4p couch coop for broforce, overcooked, moving out, etc, but actual PS5 games will only work with PS5 pads.

[Tsiklon]

The DualShock/DualAnalog were not quite the same as the DualShock 2, the face buttons on the DualShock 2 were advertised as being pressure sensitive. Some games were capable of using this.

[scott_w]

Funnily enough, this caused issues with PS2 games ported to Xbox subsequently. Metal Gear Solid 2 made heavy use of the pressure sensitive buttons for weapon aiming vs shooting. I recall the Xbox didn't have pressure sensitive buttons, so had to do something different to achieve this (I'd need someone else to fill in the gaps here, I never owned an Xbox!)

[rideontime]

Original Xbox had the pressure-sensitive buttons, but 360 did not, which specifically caused issues for MGS 2 and 3 in the HD Collection. Twin Snakes on the Gamecube suffered similarly, requiring awkward combinations of Y and A to lower your pistol or raise your automatic weapon without firing.

[butlike]

THAT'S WHY. As an avid Metal Gear enthusiast during the release of MGS2, I remember having nearly-impossible time finding MGS2 Substance for PS2 when I wanted to do my first real replay way back in the day. I imagine it was the more popular version since it had working pressure buttons, presumably.

[thunderfork]

The original Xbox actually did have pressure sensitive face buttons. Off the top of my head, the only game I know that used them is Vexx (which strangely didn't use them on the PS2...)

[mikepurvis]

The PS3 had those too, but they were dropped for the PS4 and PS5. I did read that it caused a few headaches for the classics ported forward.

Speaking of oddball controller features, I was a bit surprised the PS5 retained the little trackpad, given how little use it seemed to get on the PS4— even in obvious situations like Assassins Creed where you're moving an on-screen cursor around a map, but only with the thumbstick.

[lloeki]

> actual PS5 games will only work with PS5 pads

So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4 games? That is ridiculous.

Meanwhile I'm rocking an original release day Xbox One controller on a Series X.

That said while I can understand them dropping X360 witeless due to protocol changes I'm still bitter that the X360 wired accessories were simply denied on the Xone, notably the whole Rock Band stuff as well as steering wheels.

[gambiting]

>>So IIUC the PS4 gamepad can be used but only for PS4 games? That is ridiculous.

It's because PS5 games can use the adaptive triggers functionality that is impossible to emulate on the PS4 controller. For example in Ratchet and Clank short pull on the trigger fires the gun, there is artifical resistance past that point, but if you pull past it it will fire the secondary weapon mode. On a PS4 controller you'd just fire the secondary mode all the time because there would be no way to find the threshold on a trigger without this functionality.

Of course games could be designed around this and support both - but Sony avoided placing such a requirement on devs so all PS5 games are presumed to be using a PS5 controller when going through cert.

[lloeki]

> On a PS4 controller you'd just fire the secondary mode all the time because there would be no way to find the threshold on a trigger without this functionality.

Just don't mash the trigger all the way? You don't have the haptic feedback of such a trigger wall but claiming it's "impossible" is a bit extreme. A nice threshold mapping could arrange for that e.g 0-10% dead zone, 10%-80% main mode, 90%-100% secondary mode, _ factor in rate of press to avoid misfiring main mode. Which is probably the logic that it implements already, except with probably a bit more leeway thanks to the haptic feedback.

"Impossible" would be playing a typical† dual stick game with a gamepad that has none (e.g original PS1 gamepad)

† like a FPS that uses the now classic stick layout for quick yet precise movement + orientation

Honest question as I'm curious and don't have access to a PS5: what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on other platforms that don't have such features? Can they be played with a PS4 controller?

Oh and to be clear: it's not a Xbox vs PS thing, I find them both equally guilty of excessive e-wasting / platform locking, just in different ways.

[gambiting]

Ehhh let me put it in a different way - it's not impossible, of course. But it's about the fact that if someone is using a PS4 controller and they don't know about this, then they are going to have a bad time. And no dev wants their players to have a bad time, and neither does the platform holder. So they would rather just say no, you as a dev don't have to worry about this - every player will use a PS5 controller, done.

>>what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on other platforms that don't have such features? Can they be played with a PS4 controller?

Sure, Ratchet and Clank has a PC version now which can be played with any controller, including a PS4 or xbox controller. Obviously for this version it was remapped to make sense when using such controllers.

Again, it's not about actual literal impossibility - it's Sony's choice to say "look we want to promote features of the PS5, so code your gameplay features to make use of the adaptive triggers and we guarantee that every player will have a ps5 controller. You don't need to code your game to support older pads" - so devs don't. They obviously do on platforms like PC where the player might be using anything.

[ziml77]

What was remapped for PC? I don't have a PS5 so PC is how I played R&C:RA and I don't recall there being any difference in how the trigger pulls were interpreted between having adaptive triggers enabled or disabled.

[gambiting]

I literally had to boot up the game to check - long press on the trigger fires the secondary mode. So basically if you press and hold the trigger it will do the primary fire then the secondary fire.

[CaptainOfCoit]

> Honest question as I'm curious and don't have access to a PS5: what about PS5-only games that happen to exist on other platforms that don't have such features? Can they be played with a PS4 controller?

Games that use PS5-exclusive features when played on PS5 obviously don't use those features when not run on a PS5, if it's been ported.

While your idea sounds neat in practice, with those thresholds and such, I'm not sure how practical it is in real-life. Lots of controllers eventually start reporting somewhat inaccurate values, sometimes rather large variance, so whatever you end up using as the actual values, they tend to not be perfect for everyone, so then the game will appear really buggy, almost broken.

I'm guessing they're favoring "works 100% for everyone who can run it" rather than "Kind of works for most people, broken for the rest".

[c-hendricks]

> It's because PS5 games can use the adaptive triggers functionality

IIRC those can be disabled at the system level, and when streaming a PS5 game to a PS4 guess what, the DualShock 4 works fine.

[gambiting]

True, I have done that many times. So you're right that there is an inconsistency there - but Sony always treated remote streaming as a special case.

[mikepurvis]

It's totally reasonable to expect the native pad for single player games; my contention is more around couch multiplayer scenarios. When each pad costs as much as a day 1 game, it's a big investment to have four of them— so most players have just one or two.

As it turns out, there aren't all that many couch multiplayer games that are PS5-only, and a lot of what's there is two player only (Diablo 3/4, BG3, Hot Wheels, Borderlands, etc). So maybe the whole argument is moot, but the long and short of it is that any game which I think I might want to play with more than two people I buy on Switch instead, since I'm always going to have lots of those pads.

[xattt]

I don’t get why backward compatibility is even expected, other than a nice-to-have. Historically, gamepads weren’t portable between generations of systems.

I’ve got a Logitech steering wheel that I can’t use on 64-bit Windows because of the way the driver was implemented.

[tristor]

Because we all know that under the covers it's just Bluetooth and USB, and they don't have a good reason. Especially in Xbox world, where while the hardware on an Xbox Series X is more powerful than an Xbox One, the software is largely the same.

[lloeki]

Nitpick: Xbox One controllers communicate using a proprietary WiFi Direct protocol. Bluetooth is only there for pairing with other devices.