The PlayStation Access controller, formerly known as "Project Leonardo," is Sony's first-ever adaptive controller. Revealed earlier this year at CES, the Access controller was designed with the goal of mitigating barriers to entry in video games for gamers with disabilities. Today, the PS5 manufacturer published a new post on the PlayStation blog detailing the controller's design process over the last five years.
The post features a nine-and-half-minute-long video that gives a history behind the controller and its development. It's an impressive deep dive into the collaborative process between Sony Interactive Entertainment's internal teams and partners and the accessibility groups and consultants that helped to bring this controller to fruition.
The video itself takes up a bulk of the blog post, and features a few different prototypes and early versions of the Access controller as it evolved from concept to hardware. It highlights just how customizable the device is and shows some of the possible configurations players might use it in, including as an AMPS Mount for a wheelchair.
Brief segments also tease how the controller will interact with the PlayStation 5's user interface and show short clips of re-mapping buttons on the controller. The blog post itself and the mini-documentary even highlight how Sony's pushing for accessible packaging, with specific places for players to pull to unbox the controller with ease.
The post goes on further to announce the Logitech G Adaptive Gaming Kit for Access Controller, which (as its name suggests) is a kit with additional plugins and attachments for players to add on to the Access controller if needed. Notably, this supplemental kit is a licensed product, though not made in-house by Sony like the Access Controller. Based on the packaging and store details, it seems like this kit will feature very similar set of additional buttons and triggers to Logitech's offering for Microsoft's Xbox Adaptive Controller.
The Access Controller comes out in just under two months from now. For more on the PlayStation Access Controller, check out our hands-on preview by accessibility expert and disabled gamer, Dynamic Reactions. Or, for other Play Station 5 hardware news, we also compared the newly revealed PS5 Slim with the original PS5 model.
