Back in 2017, Sony filed a patent for a new generation of their DualShock controllers used with PlayStation consoles. Now, that patent has been approved and published, and as it turns out… yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what it was.
According to the patent documents, this new DualShock would feature a functional touchscreen. Now, the current DualShock 4 that comes with a PlayStation 4 has a touch pad with contextual inputs, but this new controller would, at least based on assumption, feature actual graphics and separate buttons on the screen itself. This could have applications both for normal games and for overlay functions regarding PlayStation Network, such as streaming content or accepting friend requests without pausing a game. This is mostly conjecture, of course, as the patent document focuses more on how the controller does what it does and not what it does. Previous forays into melding touchscreens with controllers have been met with less-than-stellar results (looking at you, Wii U), but the more streamlined design of the DualShock may be what the concept needs to work.
For now, the controller is still only a patent, so details will have to wait. Industry experts do predict, however, that we should be seeing a new PlayStation between 2019 and 2021.
