I was tinkering with my DS4Windows profile and I was randomly struck by how much I like my DualShock 4. I got it a few years back when the last of my wired and wireless 360 controllers finally gave out (seriously, those things were made from paper, I probably had a dozen and they ALL broke. I'm pretty sure they could be restored with the right spare parts though... let's put a pin in that 🤔)

I got a DualShock4 mostly for the novelty- I looked at the Xbone controller and far as I could tell it offered basically nothing new over the 360 controller except better design. The DualShock4 on the other hand had all kinds of fun features, like the touchpad that also counts as two clickable buttons, the gyro, the lightbar and there's even a standard headphone jack on the controller that Windows keeps routing all my audio to when I least expect it.

With DS4Windows, you can make use of all of these bells and whistles and do some cool stuff with it. You could turn the touchpad alone into as many as six different inputs (Left and right click, four different swipe directions). Still haven't figured out something to do with the gyro though- maybe I just don't play the right types of games.

I do prefer the Xbox controller layout and I thought the DualShock3 felt outdated and awkward to use, but they tweaked the design just enough for the DS4 where I don't really mind the stick placement or the L2 and R2 buttons. I just wish it kept the pressure sensitive buttons for those occasions when you want to emulate Metal Gear Solid games.

It honestly blows my mind MS seemingly added no new features for the Xbone or the Series X controllers. With the Xbox Elite Controller and the DS4 Back Button Attachment (which I kind of want) I thought for sure they were prototyping features that would become standard in this generation.