The PlayStation 5 is about to become much more accessible. After unveiling it in January, Sony has just announced the Access controller release date, explaining that the adjustable pad will be coming out on December 6.
Access controller pre-orders are going live soon
Sony revealed these details on the PlayStation Blog. It will be $89.99 USD/$119.99 CAD/¥12,980 JPY/€89.99/£79.99 and pre-orders are set to go live on July 21 at 10 a.m. local time through PlayStation Direct and select retailers.
The rest of the post ran down some of its already-announced features, which are also covered in a new trailer. It includes 19 button caps that come in various shapes, three stick caps (domed, standard, and ball), 23 button cap tags that make it easier to see what button is on what cap, four expansion ports that help link the controller to other devices, and a USB-C cable.
Players can set three profiles (which are shown through a light below the stick), swap buttons around, combine button inputs, adjust how far the stick sticks out from the rest of the pad, set button presses to toggles, tune the stick’s dead zone, and even mount it to another surface. All of these features were developed over five years in tandem with various members of the accessibility community, experts, and organizations.
It’s also a slightly different way of tackling accessibility when compared to the Xbox Adaptive Controller, which came out in 2018. This unique Xbox controller is a long rectangle that supports a whole host of external input devices, as opposed to being a circular pad with more buttons and fewer expansion slots.
