The design allows players to reposition, resize, or remove buttons to match personal preferences or game-specific needs.
People are very interested in a new idea from Sony that describes a very different way to make game controllers. Instead of buttons and sticks, they have a touch screen surface that can be changed. Patents don’t guarantee that a product will sell, but they often show what kinds of ideas a business is working on behind the scenes. This one shows how Sony might be thinking about how to enter info in the future.
It was filed for a patent in 2023, but it was only recently made public. The patent is for a controller device that doesn’t have any real buttons. Along with the analog sticks, the face buttons and directional buttons would no longer be on top of the joystick. That space would be better used for a big touchscreen.
Because of how it’s made, you can sometimes use more than one touchscreen.
To give players the freedom to make a control layout that they like, that is easy to use, or that fits the needs of the game. Players would be able to choose where on the screen to put the D-pad, analog sticks, and action buttons, as shown in the patent text and pictures. They could be moved, made bigger or smaller, or some buttons could be taken away if the game doesn’t need them.
Some long-running debates in controller design have to do with things like whether analog sticks should be symmetrical or asymmetrical and why buttons are put differently on different platforms. This method directly addresses these issues. Instead of making the person change, the manager would change based on who they are.
At first glance, the thought seems good. You can change how you handle the game at any time, which gives you more freedom than with a regular controller. If you play a lot of different types of games or like to change how certain games are set up, a touch-based method might feel freeing. It’s easy to see how different games could load up with different menu layouts right away.
This would make things run more smoothly and save time.
But right away, the fact that you can’t touch the screen is a big problem. It’s not the same to move a key or press a button on a touch screen. Being able to feel that difference is important for precision and muscle memory. Many gamers have already seen this issue with emulator patches or phone games that put fake buttons on the screen.
They do work, but you have to look down a lot to see the inputs, which takes away from the experience and makes it harder to control correctly. Something very bad is that there is no physical feedback. Without the resistance and confirmation that mechanical buttons and analog sticks offer, it’s hard to get the same sense of control that players get from a certain gaming controller.
In fact, this is the main reason why many mobile games choose to use external tools instead of the touch controls. People still use the normal controller style because it works well and is simple to understand. There is a long way to go before this plan for a touchscreen controller could be used as the main way to enter information.
It’s possible that haptic input that really feels like pressing buttons or moving a joystick would be needed.
Touch screens might not be useful for anything but testing or specialized reasons until they can provide that level of physical response. The idea starts to make more sense when it comes to getting around. Sony already cares a lot about making toys that disabled people can use, and a touch screen that can be changed could fit right in with that plan.
People who have trouble with their bodies should be able to move buttons around to make them easier to reach, bigger, or get rid of ones that aren’t needed. The remote wouldn’t have to replace the old gear if it worked with it. But the touchscreen idea might not work well as a full replacement. It could work well as an extra place to enter data, though.
Changes could be made to the inputs on a side panel or in a different control area. The main sticks and buttons would stay where they are. You would still have physical control with this mixed way, but you would also have the freedom that the patent talks about. The basic things that make controls easy to use and accurate could stay the same while you add more options.
Another choice is to make small changes to trends that are already in place. The patent calls for either making the touch button on the PlayStation controllers bigger or getting rid of it altogether. It might be a good middle ground to turn that touchpad into a small screen that can be customized more.
The main way of handling things would stay the same, but writers could try out new features.
Ideas from the past, like Sega’s VMU, which had an extra screen that hackers could use right away, are also like this one. The idea could be brought up to date and put into a controller so that people could be more artistic without having to switch to touch-only input.
It looks like this patent is an idea that will likely be kept secret for now. You’re willing to think outside the box and break the rules, but this also shows how limited technology is right now. It won’t be possible for touch screens to fully replace buttons and sticks until they can feel like the real tools. The idea is still interesting, and it shows that Sony is ready to change their mind about what a controller is, even though it’s still a long way off.
