One of the most surprising limitations in the case of PS5 is the fact that we cannot use the DualSense controllers on PS4. Something that does not make sense in principle, especially given the fact that there are many games that come out on both consoles that make use of the functions of said control knob. What is really happening?
The business model for consoles is called Razor and Blades, where manufacturers sell the console at a very low price and then make money back by selling games and accessories. In the first, they do it with internal title games and royalties, which is a tax on each copy of a game for the system sold by independent publishers, and therefore they have obtained a license to make games for the console.
But it is in the peripherals where at this time they also recover the cost of the price, in the PlayStation consoles during the first two generations we had the Memory Cards, but from PS3 with the addition of the serial hard disk in the console these They were no longer needed, so the associated cost of these ended up in the control knob. Which currently has evolved to what is the DualSense that is included as standard on PS5, however, and unfortunately, we cannot use it on PS4.
Taking into account that there are several star games on the PlayStation platforms that will have versions for both PS4 and PS5 and that they are heavyweights such as Gran Turismo 7 , Horizon Forbidden West , God of War: Ragnarok and others that surely do not pass us by It is clear from the head that there is nothing that really justifies not being able to use DualSense on PS4.
Why isn’t DualSense working on PS4?
The first thing we have to clarify is that there is no technical limitation that prevents the DualSense from not working on PS4, since what a control knob does is interpret the button presses and lever movements that the user performs and that are sent to the console via Bluetooth interface or USB cable. What does the processor do with the information that comes from the remote? Well, what it does is interpret it through a series of libraries that use all the games in common. SONY itself provides them to developers through the PS5 SDK on the one hand and within the system files on the consoles that people have at home.
What happens in the case of PS4? Well, those operating system libraries that are necessary to make use of the additional functions of the new SONY gamepad are not there, but we also find that we cannot even use the remote without these additional functions. Since for the company founded by Morita the DualSense is one of the reasons for buying the new generation console.
So what happens? Well, the answer is that rather PS4 which is not compatible with DualSense, however, for this we have to understand that internally both PS4 and PS5 use a list of supported peripherals and only these can work on their video game consoles. So here we already have the second reason why we cannot use the DualSense on PS5.
Peripheral identifiers?
Well yes, today any device that you buy has an identification, which gives different types of information as now:
- What is its function and therefore how the system has to handle it.
- Who is its manufacturer?
- What is the interface you use.
If you have a PlayStation 5 you will have noticed that one thing the console needs to do to identify the DualSense is to connect it to the USB port of the console. This is because what it does is access it as a USB device and then copies the access keys to communicate with the console into the Bluetooth controller of the remote, a process that it performs transparently. In this case, the identification code is found in the console database.
This is the reason why SONY also blocked during the first months of life the console to the NVMe M.2 SSDs, since all of them have a generic ID, apart from the specific one of each one, which serve so that the system knows what kind of peripheral is it. The same happens with the DualSense, but as we have said, the identification of the DualSense is not available as an authorized peripheral among the internal PS4 list.
The Dual Shock 4 is good enough
No, we are not like in the story of the fox and the grapes, the one that stated that since it did not arrive then it said that it no longer wanted them. It is true that the haptic vibration of the DualSense well used is a separate point and a great experience, however as PS5 users we have only been able to see an exhaustive and well integrated use in Astro bot, which comes standard with each of the consoles sold, the rest do not make exhaustive and intelligent use of the controller functions.
So if you have a PS4 and you are pulling your hair or biting your nails for not having the incredible DualSense in your hands, let us formulate that it does not make the games better either. It does not make games run faster, it does not make the graphics improve, the level design and the game structure do not improve either. Its technology is nothing more than a more advanced type of vibration, which by the way, works in the same way as audio files when they are converted into an analog wave, but this time making our DualSense vibrate.
In any case and in conclusion, it would cost SONY nothing to support its DualSense on PS4, especially in the midst of the lack of stock of its new generation console.
