“The hardware team considered the mechanics, we considered the gameplay, and we exchanged many opinions with each other.”
– As with the DualShock 3 and PlayStation VR, Sony Japan Studio worked alongside PlayStation hardware teams to help shape the budding technology.
Astro’s Playroom is pitched as a introductory platformer to get PlayStation 5 players familiar with the new features the console’s DualSense controller has to offer, which in turn means the dev team helped the folks at PlayStation refine the design of the DualSense leading up to its final iteration.
Sony Japan Studio head Nicolas Doucet shared some insight into that cooperative back and forth in a recent Famitsu interview, translated into English by the folks over at VGC.
According to VGC, Astro’s Playroom was developed alongside the DualSense controller, meaning the team was able to meet weekly with the hardware team to discuss what about the DualSense did and didn’t work well in practice.
“The hardware team considered the mechanics, we considered the gameplay, and we exchanged many opinions with each other,” says Doucet. This, he explains in the full interview, was a process that took place for nearly two years and allowed the team to help fine-tune some of the controller’s more novel features like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.
“We continued to send that feedback with the development of the DualSense,” he says. “It’s really quite fun, and I think it’s an uncommon development practice, but it may lead the way to the future of gameplay, so it’s really exciting to be able to do this kind of work.”