Summary
If console battles were won and lost on controllers alone, then thePS5would be the runaway winner this generation. The DualSense is a fantastic controller with one annoying flaw - its battery life.PlayStationappears to be in the process of trying to figure that out for its future controllers as a recently discovered patent points to work on a solar-powered periphereal.
The patent,discovered by Tech4Gamers, details a PlayStation controller - that looks almost identical to the DualSensein annotated diagrams- with a battery that can be charged by sunlight alone. That power will then be stored as electricity, meaning, in theory, the controller will never need to be tethered to a PS5 or power source to recharge its battery.
The machine-translated patent (thanks,TechRadar) uses the term “photovoltaic elements” which would be used to harness the power of the sun to run your PlayStation controllers. That means there’s potentially a future in which, rather than making sure your controller is plugged in and charging between gaming sessions, you can just leave it on the window sill to charge it up.
That might be tricky if you live in the UK, like me, where the sun only comes out three to five days per year.
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It’s worth stressing at this point that this is far from a finished product. In fact, at this stage, there likely isn’t a product at all. PlayStation has an idea, and potentially the means to do it that, if followed through, could end with us using solar-powered controllers. However, even if it does follow through with this idea, that finished product is years away.
PlayStation and other tech companies file patents all the time, some of which take years to become fully realized, and many don’t end up being used at all. Who knows what technical hurdles this patented controller idea might face? While a controller that runs on solar power certainly seems possible, any number of reasons could lead to PlayStation deciding it’s not worth it, most notably how much it’s going to cost to design and then manufacture the end product.
Whether we’re using solar-powered controllers in our gaming futures or not, PlayStation clearly has people on the inside who are trying to innovate. It previouslypatented technology that would allow players to smell gamesas they play them.That technology was implemented for a special The Last Of Us experienceearlier this year, although it’s still unclear if it’s something PlayStation would one day like to be a standard of its consoles and games.
