Sony's DualShock 4 light bar can't be turned off to save battery

[Adinnieken]

Ajescent said:

Adinnieken said:

riderz13371 said:

1. Nanaki Firelight ‏@nanakifirelight20h

   @yosp Can games developers choose to turn the light off on the DS4?

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2. Shuhei Yoshida ‏@yosp15h

   @nanakifirelight yes

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   10:52 PM - 8 Jul 13 (GMT-07:00) · Details

Yay!  So Sony puts the onus on developers to implement a feature that probably should have been implemented by them in the first place.

Why is it such a big deal? Everyone is acting as if the light will be brighter than the sun and blind you if you even THINK of looking directly into it.

I don't think it'll be a huge deal, nor have I made a big deal of it.  I whether or not you have the PlayStation Camera, the DS4 light bar still could be a distraction, especially in a darkly lit room if you don't have a means of turning off.  That aside, if developers do make it possible to turn off the light in their game, then cool.  None issue.

But Sony could have easily said, "You will have the means to turn it off and if game developers need to use the features of the light bar, they can enable it."  But they didn't and the reason they didn't is because the DS4 was never meant to work without the PlayStation Camera.  From the get-go, it was designed with the PlayStation Camera bundled. 

Subsequently, the bigger point here isn't the light bar, but did Sony capitalize on negative critisicm of Microsoft and their decision to include Kinect in every box to remove the PlayStation Camera?