The play station's new back button accessory is likely to be a wasted opportunity

The sony playstation's new back button is likely to be a wasted oppurtunity

    The accessory is a $30 addition to your existing controller which circles impulse-buy territory. But what does this peripheral do ?

    It plugs into the DualShock 4 through the 3.6mm headphone port. There is a headphone port on the back button attachment, so it will still work with headsets and PSVR straight off the bat.

    The integrated OLED screen sounds more spectacular than it is - just a monochrome read-out where you can tell which buttons are mapped. Press down on it to light up current settings, press it again to cycle to the next button profile (you can have up to three) and long press it to reassign keys.

    Why include an OLED display on this thing as if it tries to catch up with Scuff controllers or the Xbox's-well regarded, but  an expensive Elite controller ? There's some method to this madness. The inclusion means that the Dual shock 4 (plus peripheral) works with anything its already compatible with, whether that's a PC or an Android phone. All the 'menus' are there, built-in. That said, i'm not sure why sony didn't just put it in the front. Yeah, you won't need to look at it much, but you will need to look at it at some point.

    The triggers themselves are sensitive with very shallow travel. They feel for more premium than my existing Ds4 controller's L1/R1 keys, which didn't take much beating. Now, is this what we can expect from the playstation 5's next-gen controller ? Sony has already promised haptic feedback on trigger buttons-something that would point to more elaborate trigger keys and if this is how they're going to feel, i'm excited about it. Sony can probably ditch the hulking OLED readout, through. There are more elegant solutions, i'm sure, for the Dual Shock 5.
   So which buttons are you going to remap ? For alot of you, it'll be the L3 and R3, aka the worst buttons. Pushing down on an analogue stick in a pinch has been a recipe for disaster, heading to melee attacks when you meant to sprint and often imminent death when you make a mistake. In a lot of games, holding the L3 down has become the defacto sprint button.
    Games that demand both quick reflexes and combined inputs benefit most from the new peripheral in Overwatch, a more sensitive trigger finger is a welcome addition but I found that when using both the two pair of L and R buttons, in addition to the new triggers , my fingers would overlap. Its a little cramped at times.
    Something I can't test as an able-bodied gamer is the accessability factor here. For anyone that has issues with five hand control, the addition of larger paddles or transplanting any button to a more easy-to-reach location, could be a literal game-changer. Microsoft has taken this notion and run with it a whole lot further, but its good that sony is making moves in this direction even if it's not quite at the scale of an entirely new controller.
    To it's credit, though, the back button makes for a relatively cheap upgrade, at $30. In comparison, the Scuf Vantage 2, aimed at pro gamers, costs roughly $200 if you're a medium -to high level gamer.

    Sony's new perioheral might be the perfect fit. For the rest of us, its likely a task of the future of Dual Shock. The attachment goes on sale by january 23rd 2020.