The developers of Ghostwire: Tokyo may have played a crucial role in improving Sony’s unique DualSense controller, thanks to some rather strong feedback from the studio’s legendary founder, Shinji Mikami.
In a candid interview with ForTheWin, Tango Gameworks’ producer Masato Kimura recalled that he visited Sony to look at a prototype version of the PS5 controller with Mikami-san, who said the pad’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers felt "too weak.”
Kimura said that Mikami then told him he was “nipping out to get some tea” when in reality Mikami was going back to see Sony so he could give them “some pretty strong feedback about the controller”.
“Mikami-san is quite verbal in the way he expresses things,” Masato Kimura told ForTheWin. “The folks at Sony were probably taken aback and a little frightened by the power of Mikami-san’s vocal-ness.
“Afterward, when we received a closer-to-final prototype of the controller, Mikami-san was very happy with how his feedback was used within Sony to improve the controller. It was very impressive that they were able to take our feedback seriously and actually make improvements.”
Ghostwire: Tokyo takes advantage of the PS5 DualSense’s features in a number of pleasing ways, and really helps recreate the feeling of ripping out the ethereal hearts of the game’s antagonists, The Visitors. You can also feel the pitter-patter of rainfall, the tension of pulling back a bowstring, and other delightful and unexpected sensations that simply aren’t possible on a regular controller.
Analysis: the DualSense continues to be a highlight of the PS5
Developers have shown a surprising commitment to supporting the DualSense controller in PS5 games, something that we didn’t expect when Sony announced the gamepad’s exclusive features.
What makes Mikami-san’s direct input on the DualSense controller all the more interesting is that Tango Gameworks is now owned by Microsoft after the company acquired Bethesda for $7.5 billion in September 2020. However, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a PS5 exclusive until at least March 2023, as Microsoft decided to honor any pre-existing contracts that studios at Bethesda had made with Sony before the acquisition took place.
This was the same scenario for Arkane Studios’ Deathloop, which was released on PS5 and PC in September 2021, and isn’t coming to Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S until 2023. Again, the game took advantage of Sony’s unique controller, something which players of the PS5 version will obviously miss when playing the game using an Xbox controller.
That’s not to say that Ghostwire: Tokyo won’t be great on Xbox Series X/S, but it is kind of funny that a Microsoft-owned studio had a hand in making one of the PS5’s best features even better.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is set to release on PS5 and PC on March 25.
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