Games By James Plafke Jan. 20, 2014 11:03 am
The PS4 is a well-made machine, which is something the gaming public has echoed with their wallets. The console continues to sell like crazy, and it hasn’t even launched in its home country of Japan yet. Aside from needing more and better games to grace the platform — as every launch console does for about a year or two — Sony’s PS4 could use one small addition-by-subtraction that would go a long way toward making the console experience better: disabling the DualShock 4′s light bar.
As you have either experienced or heard about by now, the DualShock 4 has a large horizontal bar of light on the top of every controller, and the only time it shuts off is if the controller is powered down. The light bar does not give off a dim glow. It will illuminate the desk on which you place it, you can see it floating around in the reflection of your TV, and if you practice the controller-up-to-your-face-while-leaning-back position of console gaming, it will shine too brightly in your eyes. It may not seem annoying when someone is describing it, but it’s highly obnoxious in practice.
There have been rumblings that Sony might eventually add an option to the PS4 settings to shut of the DualShock 4′s light bar, but alas, president of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida said this is not the case. Someone asked him in a tweet, and he responded thusly.
Some games use the light bars in cute ways. When you switch characters in PSN puzzler*Tiny Brains, for instance, the light bar switches colors to match the characters’ aesthetics. It’s cute and a bit clever, but those multiple colors shouldn’t be forced on you and floating around reflecting on your TV, distracting you from playing the game.
While the PS4 could use some other changes and additions, giving users the option to disable the light bar — or at least dim it — would go a long way toward making the experience of using the PS4 much more pleasant.*We supposed it bodes well for the PS4, though, that everyone’s biggest complaint is that the controller has a light that doesn’t shut off.
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As you have either experienced or heard about by now, the DualShock 4 has a large horizontal bar of light on the top of every controller, and the only time it shuts off is if the controller is powered down. The light bar does not give off a dim glow. It will illuminate the desk on which you place it, you can see it floating around in the reflection of your TV, and if you practice the controller-up-to-your-face-while-leaning-back position of console gaming, it will shine too brightly in your eyes. It may not seem annoying when someone is describing it, but it’s highly obnoxious in practice.
There have been rumblings that Sony might eventually add an option to the PS4 settings to shut of the DualShock 4′s light bar, but alas, president of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida said this is not the case. Someone asked him in a tweet, and he responded thusly.
Some games use the light bars in cute ways. When you switch characters in PSN puzzler*Tiny Brains, for instance, the light bar switches colors to match the characters’ aesthetics. It’s cute and a bit clever, but those multiple colors shouldn’t be forced on you and floating around reflecting on your TV, distracting you from playing the game.
While the PS4 could use some other changes and additions, giving users the option to disable the light bar — or at least dim it — would go a long way toward making the experience of using the PS4 much more pleasant.*We supposed it bodes well for the PS4, though, that everyone’s biggest complaint is that the controller has a light that doesn’t shut off.
More...
