PlayStation fans discover incredible detail on PS5 controller
Some PS5 owners have found an Easter egg hiding in plain sight on the DualSense controller, four years after launch.
This year has seen Sony celebrate PlayStation’s 30th anniversary in various ways, between special edition hardware and throwbacks to the original console’s start-up sequence.
While 2024 has been a notable year for PlayStation nostalgia, the company has historically had a tough run in toasting its own legacy — between the poorly executed PlayStation Classic Mini and ill-judged crossover fighters like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
If PlayStation has struggled to overtly capitalise on its own history, a hidden nod on the PS5 DualSense controller suggests Sony does, however, have an eye for the small details.
In a post from December 2024 on the Today Years Old Instagram account, which often highlights factoids, it shows how the DualSense controller is covered in cross, square, circle, and triangle button symbols; iconography Sony has used since the original PlayStation in 1994.
This detail has been highlighted a few times, but it often re-emerges in online posts. There are actually 40,000 tiny symbols on every PlayStation 5 controller, which were sketched out by hand during the design phase.
As reported by The Verge, the layout of the symbols on the final controller is one of the many various prototyped designs, which were all handcrafted, digitised, mocked-up, and tested until Sony’s product design team found the best balance of comfort and appealing aesthetics.
Speaking to the outlet, Yujin Morisawa, the senior art director at Sony’s Design Centre, said: ‘While it takes a considerable amount of time to create a prototype, the ‘go/no-go’ judgment of a product is determined the moment you see it and touch it.’
The symbols themselves are created when beads of molten ABS plastic are squeezed into tiny laser-cut crevices during the controller moulding process. As such, the layout of the symbols is identical across every PlayStation 5 controller.
Since the PlayStation 5 launched in 2020, Sony has released various new versions of the DualSense, including the customisable DualSense Edge and, most recently, a special Astro Bot-themed edition.
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