Unfortunately, third-party controllers such as joysticks are not forward compatible with this new console generation. That means that your old collection of PS3 joysticks won’t work on the PS4, and the same thing goes for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. This has been one of the most disappointing things of the new generation, forcing fighting game aficionados to drop hundreds of dollars on new sticks to play games like Guilty Gear Xrd.
Luckily, a couple companies are trying to make the transition a little bit easier. One of those companies, PDP, is releasing a brand new Mortal Kombat fight pad in preparation for the upcoming fighting game Mortal Kombat X. The pad will work both on last generation and current generation consoles. They are locked to brand family though, so one will work on the PS3 and PS4 and another will work on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
Mortal Kombat is known for having kind of a wonky control scheme. In addition to four buttons used for attacks, another is used for blocks, another is used for throws, another is used for stage interaction, and yet another is used specifically for “change stance” which doesn’t actually do anything other than a cosmetic change in character stance… oh yeah… and activate your character’s super when pressed in the right combination.
It’s incredibly weird, but the fight pad will actually help with that. It features six buttons on the face of the controller, all spread out relatively wide. In addition, the left side of the controller, near the d-pad, has a longer handle. This allows you to steady the controller using only one hand. This seems a little strange, until you consider the crab grip that some fighting game players use to play on pads. This is when, instead of holding the controller in two hands, you hold it in one hand, your left hand, and tap out inputs with multiple fingers on the face buttons like you would a joystick. The extra length on the grip helps to stabilize the controller for people who play in this fashion.
A price hasn’t been given for this new controller. However, you can expect it to fall somewhere between 35 and 50 dollars, a steal when you consider the price of modern day arcade sticks easily breaking 100 dollars.
Of course, other strides have been made into the world of forward compatibility as well. Recently, Mike Z of Skullgirls fame put a call out to coders to write libraries that allow PS3 joysticks to work on the PS4. He is integrating this into Skullgirls, his own fighting game, and is letting these libraries become available for free to any other game developer. They are still a little buggy, but they work, and they are available to all companies, so there is very little excuse for any company making a PS4 game to not at least attempt to make older PS3 sticks work with it.
What do you think? Have you picked up a brand new arcade stick just for next generation consoles? Will you be picking up PDP’s new Mortal Kombat X pad? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Gamespot