IGN News - PlayStation 4 - 8 Things You'll Want to Know

Sony Computer Entertainment America Senior Staff Engineer Chris Norden hosted a Game Developers Conference panel titled "Developing for the PS4." While a lot of the speech was heady technical stuff, there were some very interesting reveals.

New Fables game?

[theseakker]

You won't really notice any difference. It's just that the analog buttons used to sense pressure, meaning if the harder you push the button you will get different interactions in the game (like maybe firing faster or something) with digital that will no longer happen.
Analog buttons means a continuous flow of data from the controller to the system, allowing it to sense pressure. Digital means its sending data in discrete 0s and 1s

[Mj]

the reason behind the light bar color is to match the button colors on the controller.
player one: blue Cross
player two: red Circle
player three: green Triangle
player four: pink Square

[trinitypaintballa]

The light bar feature is pretty cool. The muzzle flashes will be interesting in a dark room.

[d_e_s_p_e_r_a_d_o]

I really like the idea of the light-bar, its really inventive and also immersive

[emnaq]

analog buttons were only used in racing games in the ps2 era, in the ps3 era however, all racing games used the triggers or right stick for acceleration and breaking as it provided the player a better use of pressure control on the gas. The triggers aren't changing for the ps4 so you shouldn't worry.

[knaveutube]

#9, which is pretty interesting, the camera can track your controller color to know where you're sitting and put you on that side of a 2 player split screen game.

[Venomorpheus]

Changing analogue to digital was a mistake, pressure response for braking and accelerating in whilst driving is a must.

[Linkwii]

the ps4 controller light bar represent the controller face buttons. Square is pink, X is blue, circle is red, and traingle is green.

[Odoy]

The buttons on the DS3 can act as triggers [the more you push them the faster car goes for example]. That means presure sensitive. Digital means only on/off state.

[NotNerdyENT]

Some Developers did use Analog buttons. For example, I know in Madden football if you are on offense, as a quarterback, if you tap the receiver button quickly its a quick pass, whereas if you hold the button down the quarterback lobs the pass. Either way, I think the controller looks good and very comfortable.

[mickyadams]

sounds great so far! taking care of smaller details like including a headset is good too.

[englishmaverick]

that light bar is cool, how it will show your health on a shooter or something like that, thats wicked

[ypoora]

Should be:
P1-Red
P2-Blue
P3-Yellow
P4-Green.

Gamecube taught me.

[jammer]

I was simply arguing against some of your points, as you did with him. Thanks for watching my show, by the way.

[trombonekingdom]

Digital buttons are just on/off. Analog buttons can sense pressure. Think a racing game where you would hold the trigger half way to accelerate slower and all the way down to go faster.

[HookahNinjaChristoph]

A included headset will make a good impact cause online is usually pretty quiet on psn.

[gaffellper]

it has a headset jack built into the controller (something the previous controller didn't have) and the it will come with a headset as well

[SuperThobal]

No it's like you can decide how much pressure to use. So if you only press it a little bit you could get something different then when you press it all the way.

[TeamXDDDDD]

I'll definitely check it out. If the PS4 doesn't break the record, it has to get at least 2 or 3 times the sales of the Xbox One. On Amazon, more people preordered the PS4 controller alone than the Xbox One Battlefield 4 bundle pack.

[DeadlockABC]

The one thing I hope they do improve upon is the price of certain games on the PS store. New releases cost like £49:99 or even higher when bought digitally, yet with PC alternatives like Steam you can get them for around the £29.99 mark. Don't understand why Sony feel the urge to rip people off with digital copies, so yeah hope they improve that aspect.