The lights are on
Amidst all the buzz of Sony's virtual reality reveal, news of smaller changes coming to the PlayStation 4 in the coming months has come out of GDC.
In an interview with Geoff Keighley and subsequent tweets, Sony Computer Entertainment's president of worldwide studios, Shushei Yoshida, says a future update will allow for players to dim the light bar on the DualShock 4 controller. The light bar cannot be turned off completely, he says. Many on Twitter assumed this new option would improve the PS4 controller's battery life, but Yoshida says this is not the case as "LED uses little battery."
In addition, tweets from Sucker Punch reveal an update to the PlayStation Store may be coming next month in North America that will allow players to pre-load digital game downloads onto their console. Sony has not yet officially announced this feature. We've reached out to Sony for confirmation, and will update this story if we hear back.
[Sources: @yosp, @geoffkeighley, and @suckerpunchprod]
Our Take:The light bar on the PS4 controller can be distracting at times, so the ability to lower its brightness is a welcome update. If game pre-loads turns out to be true, it will provide even more incentive for players to purchase games digitally on PlayStation and is definitely in Sony's best interest.
How about turning it off??!
Hope to see pre loading on all consoles soon. It's just way more convenient if you want the digital copy.
I hardly ever notice the light bar. I'm usually too focused on the game lol.
Pre-loading is a good step forward, makes players happy because the can play right after release and probably helps Sony out with the midnight bandwidth hit.
Wish this would have got in before Infamous: Second Son. That game is probably too big for me to expect to be able to download and play tonight.
The light bar doesn't bother me much and my only interest in dimming would be to save battery so I guess that's pointless still a nice option though! Please move the option to turn on the DS4 towards the front of the menu.
This is AWESOME news! This should give ALLOT more battery life to the controller! I'm hearing like 6hrs of extra gameplay berfore it dies. Thank you so much Sony! But if we could cut it off wouldn't it add like another 3hrs atleast? Can't wait for you guys to turn it off all together it's so bright and blinding.
Before commenting "I hope it improves the battery life" please read the article.