Diablo IV, Console Support, and DualSense

by Rian

Part 2 on the most recent title from Diablo franchise, and frankly found more often on the indie games, the dubious controller support and lack of documentations thereof. As strange as it sounds, there are aspects of a video game where a spec is necessary. Not just “minimum requirements” and “recommended” specs of your hardwares, but specs of what a game includes. You could, in theory, play an 8 bit retro game on a surround sound system, but that would be an overkill.

Consoles are generally sitting in different environment than PCs. I briefly discussed how the controllers are compared to mouse and keyboard. That isn’t quite the end of the story. Most console gamers would have the system connected to their home entertainment, (i.e. where the TV and audio live) and often have different criteria for a game. In such systems, games are expected to take advantage of both. HDR on TVs have been selling like hotcakes, let alone consoles with HDR, and most soundbars, easy investment in audio for hobbyists, support rear speakers.

I would argue consoles are plainly different platform; there is no point in arguing that consoles are glorified PCs hooked up to a TV. It’s a different market serving different gamers. Having said that, it is the job of a game to communicate the spec of what it can support. One can play 8 bit retro games on 4k TV with surround sound systems, but the experience will not be any different playing it on 640×480 with a mono speaker. It is “playable”, but not what it is expected of.

Early reviews of Diablo IV have routinely praised its usage of new DualSense features, but it appears the game has disabled most, if not all, of DualSense haptic features since. Again, the game is not unplayable. It’s merely lacking. Diablo IV store page on PSN does not mention haptic feedback support, so I am quite doubtful if Blizzard will ever return the features back into the game.

It is also worth mentioning that Sony’s policy hasn’t been particularly helpful in this regards. Not all games support DualSense’s new features nor it should become mandatory. However, gamers shouldn’t be asked to double, triple check reviews and online discussions just to see if a game still supports haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Since Sony is in control of the store, Sony could easily create an automated system that checks whether the game in question polls for either the haptic or the adaptive APIs. Perhaps this much is too demanding of a task for a store operator, but this is a feature Sony proudly presented with the new consoles and is unlikely to go away in the next.