Playstation controllers had a feature that hadn’t been seen since the PS4. Its absence has been confusing players for years – Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

From the DualSense’s adaptive triggers to the Wiimote’s motion sensor, Technology has always played a critical role in the controls we use.. Over the decades, companies have introduced new features that justify generational change, including in controls, ensuring that some of them caught on while others faded into oblivion.

This is the case of one of the most forgotten features of the Playstation 2 controller: pressure sensitive buttons. Introduced many years ago in the alternate controller for the first PlayStation, this feature was used to allow the same button to do different things depending on how we pressed. For example, in action games, pressing more or less intensely can result in different hits.

At a time when triggers were not used as often, each front button was slightly more complex. Its use was common in racing games.where pressing a button harder made cars accelerate more, but there were smarter examples. In the Metal Gear Solid PS2 games, the same aim button was used to fire if you applied more pressure.

While the theory is interesting, in practice there have been few titles that have used this in a meaningful or memorable way. Some of the most famous are GTA, Gran Turismo, MGS or Silent Hill 2 and 3. This feature has survived a generationbut on the PlayStation 3 controller it will be used even less frequently, with frequent nods to remastered PS2 games as the main way to take advantage of them.

As with other controller oddities, its use on the PS3 was likely curtailed due to the fact that its competitor, the Xbox 360, didn’t have them (while the original Xbox did), which was an additional head-scratcher a pain for developers regarding cross-platform. titles they would probably want to avoid. It is not surprising that with the advent of the Dualshock 4, Sony decided to get rid of these buttons.. Apparently the added value was not beneficial to justify the existence of something that had no particular use.

Impractical sophistication in most cases

Another possible answer is related to look for design simplification. Players were already content with memorizing button combinations across games, without having to remember which buttons were reused in each game. Especially when it was often so subtle that you forgot it was there.

And yet his absence has been noted all this time. There are many comments from players asking why they were removed, or trying to compile lists of all the games that used this functionality. Not to mention that its existence had a psychological impact on an entire generation, with the widespread belief that if you press any button harder, it will do the same thing, but with greater intensity: jump, hit, or speed up the car. Something that was not true in all cases.

Today we are talking about a nostalgic feature that helps identify an entire generation of consoles. Despite their sophistication, the industry clearly felt it was better off without them, and none of the major consoles anymore have pressure-sensitive buttons, nor do the Steam Controller or Steam Deck.

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