The PlayStation Backbone is a great mobile gaming controller, but a bad PS5 companion

digitaltrends.com:

The Backbone is my favorite mobile controller. It’s a solid pick for anyone looking to game on the go, but it always skewed heavily in a Microsoft direction due to its matching Xbox face buttons and heavy Game Pass marketing. Sot was exciting when PlayStation announced that it would be officially partnering with Backbone to make a PlayStation-centric version of the mobile controller I’ve come to love.

Now that I have it in my hands, however, I’m left asking myself, “Is this really what I wanted?” In marketing the controller, both Backbone and PlayStation made it clear that it’s not meant to be a mobile DualSense, but I still couldn’t help but feel disappointed. It’s a Backbone colored like a DualSense that features PlayStation face buttons, but that’s it. The description on the product listing on the Backbone website says that the controller is “inspired by the look and feel of the PS DualSense,” but it only makes good in the looks department of that statement.

Despite being “inspired” by the DualSense, the PlayStation Backbone doesn’t have a single one of the features that have come to define the controller of the PS5 generation. Normally, I’d say that my disappointment is the result of misaligned expectations, but after giving a handful of first-party PlayStation 5 games a try using the PlayStation Backbone, I think there’s a deeper problem at work.

The DualSense is an excellent controller. On a base level, it’s extremely comfortable to hold and has a real weight and level of responsiveness to it. It’s essentially everything you need in a controller and more thanks to its exclusive features like haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and 3D audio. These are features that, in one way or another, every PlayStation