Folks over at Polygon have discovered a new Sony Interactive Entertainment patent that showcases a controller design featuring two programmable buttons built into the back of the device.
The patent, which was approved on December 26th by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), differs from the patent we saw in November and its design differs from the newly-unveiled back button attachment for the DualShock 4. According to a translation of the document by Polygon, these two new buttons can be programmed to perform functions of other buttons on the controller.
Image credit: SIE via WIPOIn the diagrams above, the buttons appear directly behind the analog sticks but the application mentions that this design isn’t final and their positions could change.
An abstract reads:
Proposed is an input device that enables various operations. In the input device, the plurality of operation buttons (11) and directional keys (12) are arranged on the upper surface (17g). Lower surface buttons (31R, 31L) are arranged on the lower surface (17a). The lower surface buttons (31R, 31L) protrude downward from the lower surface (17a), have a surface (31a) to be pressed that can be pressed by a finger of a user, and are arranged so that the surface (31a) to be pressed is inclined with respect to the front edge (10a) of the input device.
Although the patent is in Japanese, you can find more diagrams in the application published on WIPO’s online database.
Patents don’t always materialize so it’s possible that Sony is merely toying around with various designs. We’ll update our readers when we have more information.
[Source: Polygon]