Need a little more control for your PlayStation? There’s an optional back button coming.
Some gamers need a little more than what their controllers offer. It’s not that the controller they have is bad, but just that it wasn’t necessarily designed for every game.
If you need to map quick functions to get around the game faster, chances are the stock standard controller that game with your console wasn’t built for that. It was built to let you go up, down, left, right, forward, backward, and to execute commands through one of the many buttons the controllers have grown to support.
But if you want more flexibility, sometimes you need to expand to a different controller, or maybe just upgrade the one you have.
While companies such as Razer, Mad Catz, and Microsoft have catered for the former, Sony is looking to deliver on the latter, creating an addition to the controller for the Sony PlayStation 4 that snaps in additional functionality.
Called the DualShock 4 Back Button Attachment, the whole thing looks a little like an accessory that could have been an April Fool’s joke, and yet it is apparently all real, delivering a small OLED screen alongside two buttons meant to sit at the back of where you fingers grip the PlayStation 4 controller. In a way, they act as triggers, but they’re triggers that can be mapped and to game controller functions already in place.
Wish the triangle was in an easier to reach place that could be triggered by muscle memory? Map that. Want it to be a right trigger immediately after? Map that to another profile, and press the main button to have it jump between options.
From what we can tell, the buttons can’t be set up in a macro, so if you want to combine buttons or line them up in an order for triggering by one button, the Sony PS4 OLED Back Button can’t do that. It will also plug into the 3.5mm spot on the bottom of the PlayStation 4 controller, but don’t fret, as you’ll get it back with a 3.5mm port on the bottom of the button.
As for when you’ll be able to find the controller button, Sony says February 14 is the timeline for this one, arriving Valentine’s Day for $49.95 in Australia.
