It's mocking you

To date, the PlayStation 4 controller’s light bar has caused two accidental marriage proposals, a minor earthquake, and aliens to avoid contact with Earth. Granted, we read all of this on the Daily Mail’s website, but it hopefully illustrates the serious issues that the DualShock 4’s illuminated surface has caused not just around the world, but also in outer-space.

And do you want to know the worst thing? Sony’s been lying to us about the eye-searingly bright bulb for the past year or so. Originally billed as part of the PlayStation Camera pipedream, the platform holder has since admitted that it included the controversial beam for virtual reality purposes – it just wasn’t allowed to talk about it until now.

“The tracking light… It was our department that said that we need that on,” revealed shifty SCEE senior designer Jed Ashforth in an interview with TechRadar. “It was for tracking for virtual reality. And when all of 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.”

Seeing as the platform holder has been eager to demo its Oculus Rift-esque headset Project Morpheus with PlayStation Move controllers, it does make sense. The organisation has stressed on multiple occasions that motion tracking goes hand-in-hand with virtual reality, so we’re not surprised that it wanted some sort of solution out of the box.

Still, we can understand the frustration from some serial whiners, as the contentious luminescence – cheque’s in the post, Kell – is pretty bright. At least, it is unless you take advantage of the system’s new dimming functionality, which will not only prevent your neighbours from thinking that you’ve stolen the Northern Lights, but also extend your battery life to boot. Bonza!

[source techradar.com, via eurogamer.net]