Sony won't offer option to disable DualShock 4 light bar


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http://www.computerandvideogames.com/445695/sony-wont-offer-option-to-disable-ps4-dualshock-4-light-bar/

 

PlayStation's president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida has ruled out the possibility of offering PS4 owners the option to disable the DualShock 4's light bar.

Yoshida addressed fans via Twitter after the exec was quizzed on the likelihood of a "future update" that may offer the ability to turn off the illuminated panel on the upper surface of the controller for games that make no use of it.

"No," replied Yoshida, in response to the question.

Common complaints from players and critics include the light bar reflecting in the TV screen and the controller's relatively short battery life (around 7 hours) compared with the DualShock 3.

When it was later implied such a feature would help extend the controller's battery life, Yoshida added, "The LEDs do not use much battery".

The light bar's primary function is to serve as a trackable beacon for the PlayStation Camera, which provides motion controls similarly to the glowing orb of the PlayStation Move controller for PS3.

Without the camera and a game that supports it the light bar rendered largely unused, with few titles putting it to use in other ways (Killzone Shadow Fall changes the LED's color in correspondence with player health).

PS4 sales topped 4.2 million units in 2013, Sony claimed last week. Having debuted in North America on November 15 and in Europe two weeks later, PS4 is now available in 53 countries and territories worldwide. Combined retail and digital PS4 software sales have surpassed 9.7 million, said the firm.

 

A poster on neogaf performed battery tests with and without LED

 

According to @yosp we are going to have to live with the DS4 LED. Even with multiple tests showing the LED uses twice as much power with it on, on an idle controller:

With LED on .08A (stable)

With LED off . 03A to .04A (variable)

The DS4 has a 1000mAh Li-ion battery therefore the idle battery life would be calculated as:

LED enabled: (1000/80) = 12.5 hours

LED disabled: (1000/35) to (1000/30) = 28.6 hours

Completely disabling the LED is a difficult task and like others I've just kept electrical tape over my LED as I find it distracting and breaks immersion on top of the reduced battery life. Its a shame we can't simply have a PS4 OS choice given PS4 developers and @yosp said that developers can turn it off if they choose.

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I have never had an issue with the LED.  The controller has yet to die on me (when it gets low, I throw it on USB, and it charges and works fine).  Then when I am ready to play again, it's charged and ready.

I actually like the blue led it gives a bit of.. atmosphere I guess.  I don't notice the reflection, I do see it but it's not something I really notice unless I look.  I can see the benefit to disabling it, but overall I have no issues with it.

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I dont like bright lights on anything wish there was an off instead of electrical tape fix

 

I honestly don't even notice it unless I look directly at it.

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If it can be turned off on a game to game basis by the developers, there is a modicum of sense on not allowing it to be disabled on the OS level as to avoid any conflict with games that do require it to be on. Still, I don't see many sympathetic developers out there that are going to pass on the chance to use the light bar in something in their games.

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Unless it's technically impossible to do it with an update, I'm sure/hope they'll cave to negative feedback eventually.

 

I'm not fussed if it's there or not, I don't have an issue with the reflections in my set up, but I certainly wouldn't say no to longer battery life.

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I don't care either way to be honest, and those neogaf numbers don't mean anything.  It doesn't take into consideration that no one sits idle with their controller like that, how much does it drain when commands are being sent to the system from button presses and the rumble motors are going. I'm more so curious to see the drain compared to the other components.

 

While I say "I don't care", if it was much shorter than it is then I'd be annoyed.  It's lasted me a full day when I've been home sick, so that's all I'm asking for (that's not to say I wouldn't want something with the DS3 battery life again).

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"Wont offer an option", but that doesn't preclude it being automatically turned off when not needed?

This is what's needed, not faffing around in settings menus turning it on/off. Be intelligent about it.

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How does it effect battery life while you're using it? Because if it gets 2x the battery life when you're not using it, but only 15 minutes more if it's in use, that's a big difference.

 

Based off of how little power components can use while in standby, it wouldn't surprise me.

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I don't have any issue with the reflections, but I do notice the battery life. Its much different that my ds3 controllers. I rarely get close to the 7 hours that is claimed.

Sure, I can plug my controller in to charge it, but I'm use to not having to worry about that for longer than I do now, so its an issue for me.

Anything they can do to improve that is very welcome.

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Well, it does seem a bit silly that it can't be turned off, but at the same time, I don't see all that much issue with it personally. I don't understand the complaints about it being so bright it's distracting. I've never noticed the light while playing, even in the dark. Are you guys sitting a foot from your TV? At the roughly... 7 feet I'd say I am from my TV, I don't see the glow at all. As for battery life, I'm not an avid enough gamer to have it bother me. I have never once, and probably never will use my controller until it's dead, and it's pretty easy to plug it in when you're done playing. That's also why I bought a couple of 15 foot micro USB cables though, so I can charge while playing if it does get low.

 

Still, I don't have the camera, and I don't have any intentions at the moment of getting one, unless some game comes out and makes amazing use of it and leaves me no option, and I expect I'm not the only one like this. It would be nice to be able to disable it, or even have it automatically disable when no camera is detected. That doesn't seem that difficult to do, and I know they have to be capable of controlling it since it changes colors depending on your player number and, as mentioned, in some games.

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Can you disable it by opening the controller and disconnecting the LEDs?

 

I think so. I saw a poster on Neogaf do just that in order to do some testing on how long the controller lasts. I can't remember the exact results though but i don't think the experiment was using the exact scenario for both tests so it skewed the results.

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i actually went looking the other day for the option to disable the light. Obviously not there. Since i watch a lot of Netflix, and the like, my controller sits idle most of the time. i'd welcome any improvement to the DS4's battery life.

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i actually went looking the other day for the option to disable the light. Obviously not there. Since i watch a lot of Netflix, and the like, my controller sits idle most of the time. i'd welcome any improvement to the DS4's battery life.

 

Doesn't the PS4 have an option to turn manually turn off the controller like the PS3? No reason to keep it on while watching a show.

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Doesn't the PS4 have an option to turn manually turn off the controller like the PS3? No reason to keep it on while watching a show.

 

Yeah the auto turn off feature after x amount of minutes is already there. Can't believe it took years to come to the PS3 back in the day lol.

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Doesn't the PS4 have an option to turn manually turn off the controller like the PS3? No reason to keep it on while watching a show.

Yep it does, and either by default it is very short, or I set it to be very short, as I think after 5-10 minutes my controller just turns off on it's own.

I do not see any reflection thanks to my setup, and not thanks to me being an old man I will never even come close to using it long enough that it dies, so none of this bothers me at all really, but I guess I see how people who have 12.5 hours a day to dedicate to gaming would be upset. I've just gotten into the habit of making sure 1 of my 2 controllers is charged at all times.

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Yep it does, and either by default it is very short, or I set it to be very short, as I think after 5-10 minutes my controller just turns off on it's own.

I do not see any reflection thanks to my setup, and not thanks to me being an old man I will never even come close to using it long enough that it dies, so none of this bothers me at all really, but I guess I see how people who have 12.5 hours a day to dedicate to gaming would be upset. I've just gotten into the habit of making sure 1 of my 2 controllers is charged at all times.

The thing is of course that the controller has a lithium battery, lithium batteries life is measure in charge cycles, unlike NiMH who can be "revived" and kept alive longer by taking tare of them well enough, a lithium battery however has a certain amount of charges in it's life. and I'm guessing the controllers don't have the fancy 900-1200+ cycles batteries, but the standard ~600 cycles ones(hopefully not the old ~300 ish ones). this means that instead of using the battery for 4-5 days or more before charging them, you're wasting cycles by charging every day, because the controller has low battery capacity, or rather it uses excessive power for now good reason.

 

also didn't Sony at the reveal or E3 or something promise it would be possible to disable when the issue of annoying light and reflection first came up ? I seem to remember they did. 

 

Also I thought "it doesn't effect me" was declared a non valid argument months ago ;)

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Doesn't the PS4 have an option to turn manually turn off the controller like the PS3? No reason to keep it on while watching a show.

According to what I have read, Netflix will pause if you manually turn off DS4.
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According to what I have read, Netflix will pause if you manually turn off DS4.

 

Seriously? :huh: Netflix needs to get that fixed ASAP.

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Seriously? :huh: Netflix needs to get that fixed ASAP.

Yeah if that is the case, they seriously do, as I was watching Crackle last night, a few 22-25 minute long episodes of the new season of Comedians in Cars Having Coffee, and I had to turn it on each time I went to go watch another episode.

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Yep it does, and either by default it is very short, or I set it to be very short, as I think after 5-10 minutes my controller just turns off on it's own.

I do not see any reflection thanks to my setup, and not thanks to me being an old man I will never even come close to using it long enough that it dies, so none of this bothers me at all really, but I guess I see how people who have 12.5 hours a day to dedicate to gaming would be upset. I've just gotten into the habit of making sure 1 of my 2 controllers is charged at all times.

That is true, but its hard to forget how good the battery life was for the DS3 and not to mention the X1/360 controllers.

I guess its more about comparing it to what has come before more than anything.

I just keep my ps4 controller plugged in, no reason to even mess with it.

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