Having been announced under the codename Project Defiant, Sony has now revealed more about the FlexStrike wireless fight stick. The stick is still in development, but will be viewable at Evo 2025 in Las Vegas, building up to a release in 2026.
The FlexStrike is compatible with both PS5 and PC, using either a wired connection or their ultra-low latency PlayStation Link USB dongle. The fight stick has mechanical switch buttons with toolless swappable restrictor gates – there are square, circle, and octagon restrictor gates that can be kept within storage compartments for the gates and the USB adapter. Additionally, the stick will come with a handy sling carry case, so you can take it wherever you need to get some fighting done. Digitally.
There’s some good quality of life features around all of this. That PlayStation Link dongle is an updated version of the one that shipped with the Pule Elite and Pule Explore headset and earbuds, now with USB-C – it’s not entirely clear if the original dongle will get a firmware update, but we’d expect it to. One dongle allows for simultaneous fight stick and audio use, and on PS5, one dongle will let two fight sticks connect for couch multiplayer.
The control inputs can be customised with a built-in lever mode switch for directional input tweaks, and a lock button to prevent accidental inputs and layout changes in a match.
While the FlexStrike has got many of the same game inputs as found on the DualSense controller, and has a touchpad, there will be software support to let it run at the same time as a DualSense controller, if you’d rather use the gamepad for menu navigation.
Source: PS Blog
