Sony's PS5 comes with a secret weapon for next-gen levels of immersion

Sony and Microsoft are ramping things up for the release of the PS5 and Xbox Series X this November, with Sony making moves towards announcing a price and release date after dropping its first PlayStation 5 commercial. 

The ad is all about the console's next-gen levels of immersion thanks to the PS5's 3D audio and the controller's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, but Sony has tapped some developers to talk more about how the features will be used in their games, and we're in for a few surprises that have never been seen before.  

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Over on the PlayStation blog, the creative director of Marvel's Spider-Man: Mile Morales, Brian Horton, shares how the DualSense's haptic feedback will enhance gameplay, letting players feel like they're in the thick of the action:

"The haptic feedback precision allows us to do all sorts of new things. In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, we’ll be hinting to players which direction attacks are coming from by providing haptic feedback from the appropriate direction on the DualSense wireless controller.   

"What does it feel like to use Miles’s stealth ability? How does a Venom Blast feel? Because of the high resolution of DualSense wireless controller’s haptics system, we can really push the dimensionality of the feedback. For instance, as you hold down Square to do a Venom Punch, you feel Spider-Man’s bio-electricity crackle across from the left side of the controller, culminating in the right side on impact."

Deathloop game director, Dinga Bakaba, talks about utilising the adaptive triggers in the FPS, which is the perfect genre for the mechanic:

"I’m really excited by the adaptive triggers and the haptic feedback, both features that will bring some physicality in game experiences, and give important feedback. Deathloop being a first-person shooter, we do a lot of things to make weapons feel differently from one another. 

"One I like is blocking the triggers when your weapon jams, to give to the player an immediate feedback even before the animation plays out, which prompts the player in a physical way that they have to unjam their gun."

Ghostwire: Tokyo director, Kenji Kimura, added that his team's game use the adaptive triggers to "create the sensation of recoil. In terms of the haptic feedback, which he describes as essentially an evolution of previous gen's vibrating controllers, Kimura says:

"The haptic feedback, in comparison to the vibration function of previous generations, allows us to utilize a much wider range, starting from a very strong vibration that is much more powerful than before, down to extremely light vibration.

"This way we can offer players very detailed, “textured” nuances. Because of this, our approach is different – it isn’t a transient or a constant vibration level anymore, it allows us to meticulously adjust the feedback throughout the game."  

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Gavin Moore, creative director at SIE Japan Studio, compared the DualSense to the DualShock 4 using Demon Souls as an example. He describes turning "the simple act of pulling a lever to open a gate into a sensory experience" which is something that rumble "could never do."

The DualSense is looking like it's going to be Sony's secret weapon for upping the immersion levels next generation, and luckily it's had a battery buff to deal with all of the extra tweaks that have been made. We can't wait to experience it for ourselves when the PS5 launches this November. 

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