Could the PlayStation 4 benefit from having a lie detector built into its new DualShock 4 controller? That was the question that early developers of the device had to consider before pushing the final product to be unveiled at the 2013 E3 Conference.
According to an interview Sony's lead system architect, Mark Cerny, did with Stuff, the company "looked at pretty much any idea [it] could think of," before settling on a modified version of the DualShock 3 gaming controller design. One of these ideas was to include a biofeedback sensor to detect how stressed the player was, based on how much his or her hand was sweating while playing.
The initial idea behind the technology would be to gage a player's stress level while playing a game and, if the monitor detected that a gamer was blowing through the game with a bit too much cavalier ease, it would know to automatically turn up the heat and maybe add a few more bad guys into the mix to keep his or her experience unique and interactive every time he or she turns on the console. Unfortunately for gamers, the system did not make it all the way through the controller's development stage and was eventually scrapped. Instead, users can be excited about the touchpad now featured at the center of the DualShock 4 controller.
In the interview, Cerny addressed complaints that the DualShock 3 was not the best controller for first-person-shooter games.
"Historically we have heard many times that our controllers have not been ideal for first-person shooters, he said. "so we wanted to make sure we had something that would be much better for the genre. We tested the throw of the triggers, the position of the triggers, how much pressure it takes. We looked at the joysticks, the dead spot, we looked an convexity and concavity." According to him, the end result of all of these factors fits into the new device in an extraordinarily natural feel.
What do you think? Would having the same kind of technology used in polygraph tests benefit your gaming experience or was Sony right to leave that development out for now? Tell us your thoughts below.
