The PS4’s DualShock 4 controller features a colour-changing light, and although it can now be dimmed in settings, there’s no way of turning it off completely. Sony stayed quiet on the matter for a long while, as people complained about the reflection on the screen, but now they’ve broke their silence on why it’s there.
It wasn’t just a gimmicky (but smart) way for developers to bring you into the game further with different colours representing different things, nor was it purely for Move-style tracking. No, it’s there because it needs to be for Project Morpheus.
“The tracking light… it was our department that said we need that on,” said Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s senior designer, Jed Ashforth, when speaking to TechRadar. “It was for tracking for VR.”
“And when all these things were coming out six months ago and everyone was going ‘it’s reflecting in my TV,’ we were going ‘oh no’ because we couldn’t tell anyone what it was for.”
So, Project Morpheus will need the tracking light to work, and that gives us a bit more insight into how it’s going to work – it’s likely that it’ll take your hand movements as well as head movements into account, making an even better VR experience.
Kevling
The thing that always baffled me, is that they originally claimed it was to give feedback to the player by changing colour in certain situations… but the light is angled so you can’t even see it while you are playing.
I’ve never noticed it illuminating the room, or reflecting off my TV, and sometimes, if I actually turn the controller over to look at it, I’m genuinely surprised when it isn’t blue :)
I’m sure in years to come Sony will final admit they couldn’t turn the light off purely because they wired it up in a way that you couldn’t, as it never crossed their mind ;)
CrawFail
The light bar is the worst.
It doesn’t illuminate my room..my TV does a decent job at that as well as all the other light flying around because I don’t play in a pitch black room.
My main issue is the battery life of the controller. My DS3s STILL last absolutely ages, days. My DS4 goes down to 2 bars after about half an hour and proceeds to die after about 5-6 hours.
How about, as everyone else has said, an option to turn the damn light off in the rare instance the player isn’t using Morpheus..like now for example.
While you’re at it give the XMB thing some ability to organise the app/game tiles, the ability to delete PlayRoom, the ability to delete games and apps from Library..
I love my PS4 but there is sooooo much they could do to make it better.
double-o-dave
It’s never been a problem for me. I forget the things lit up when its in my hand to be honest, never seen it reflect on my TV or monitor.
I would be interested to see whether it really does effect the battery life though as I’ve read conflicting reports.
Has anyone actually ever charged 2 controllers and just left them sitting idle with one on full brightness and one dimmed to see which battery dies first?