PlayStation’s newly minted mascot Astro Bot is getting celebrated in all the right ways. Not only will the little guy be the star of the company’s flagship holiday season release later this year, but he’ll also get his own special edition controller alongside it.
Developer Team Asobi revealed the Astro Bot controller this week via the PlayStation blog. Studio head Nicolas Doucet said the controller has been in the works for a while now. He also added that the controller is based on the living DualSense controller that helps Astro in the upcoming game.
The controller itself features metallic blue accents on the handles and buttons, tinted symbols on the D-pad and face buttons, carved-in robotic lines along the middle of the controller, and a pair of Astro Bot-like eyes on the touchpad. The last feature in particular is a cute finish that makes this controller one of a kind.
The controller is priced at $79.99. Preorders will open on August 9 at 10 a.m. Eastern. It released September 6.
Astro Bot getting his own controller is appropriate not only since it's this year’s tentpole PlayStation release but also because of Astro’s connection to the PlayStation brand. The last game in the series is a pack-in for the PlayStation 5 and a fun send-up of Sony’s gaming history. The five-hour experience sees Astro Bot jump his way through five generations of PlayStation technology with tons of nods and easter eggs to the brand's biggest hits. It was also a perfect demonstration of the DualSense’s haptic feedback features.
In addition to the controller’s reveal, Doucet shared a few specifics about how the upcoming family-friendly game will further expand on DualSense controller's many unique features.
“You can feel the surfaces that Astro runs and slides on, from grass, sand, metal to more squishy textures or water,” Doucet writes. “That was already the case with Astro’s Playroom, but we have increased the number of textures you can feel through the controller.”
Team Asobi has also “doubled down on the adaptive triggers,” promising that new powers like the jetpack and the spaceship-like Dual Speeder shown in trailers can be felt ratting against the players fingers in synch with on-screen animations.
“Every new power up has been given that same special treatment so you will be able to experience various expressions through your fingers,” Doucet writes.
Lastly, the team promises that boss fights will feature unique rumble effects.
Astro Bot may not have the name recognition or critical acclaim of big PlayStation franchises like Marvel’s Spider-Man or The Last Of Us. But the game is already poised to become the unexpected hit of the year. At a time when few first party studios outside of Nintendo are going after the lucrative family-friendly market, Astro Bot seems like a strong attempt by Sony to rectify that.
