Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has revealed on Twitter that PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 controller will be compatible with Windows PCs without the need of specialized drivers – at least when it comes to ‘basic functions’.
Sony’s announcement is a little surprising for the fact that there has been no word from other camps about such compatibility as yet – neither Nintendo nor Microsoft have revealed anything of this sort for their respective gaming console controllers.
The ‘basic functions’ ability of the DualShock 4 means that the Sony isn’t planning to integrate the touchpad abilities of the controller with Windows. Yoshida has confirmed that “the analog sticks and buttons will work just fine.”
Sony is going to release the DualShock 4 controller alongside the planned November 15 release of PlayStation 4 across the US. Users can buy the DualShock 4 controller in black, blue, and red casings.
The tweet was first noticed by Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2013/10/05/dualshock-4-will-work-with-windows-for-basic-functions/) yesterday and it noted that there are quite a few non-Microsoft third party controllers that register with Windows systems as Xbox controllers using the Xinput API. Yoshida hasn’t divulged any further information about how the DualShock 4 manages the integration with Windows PC. He asked everyone to wait till the field report is out.
