Remember Sony’s plan to ditch physical discs that everyone’s angry about? Remember the “no disc, no buy” campaign? No, you don’t. There are new PS5 controllers, and they’re nostalgic and pretty and cool. Lookee here. See? Shiny, shiny PS5 controllers.
PlayStation is inviting owners to “see your PS5 console and DualSense controller in a whole new way” with its Prism Collection, which is gearing up for preorders on Nov. 10. The collection features, as Sony Vice President Isabelle Tomatis writes, “striking transparent designs.” Three colors are available: Flare Orange, Emerald Green, and Graphite Gray. All three are see-through and glossy. I think the red one is my favorite, because I never owned a PlayStation growing up, but I certainly owned a toy fire truck, and I’ll be darned if that vermilion hue doesn’t take me right back to the simpler days of my youth.
The goal is to bring customers back to how these controllers used to look. For those of you who aren’t old grumps (something something get off my lawn, and also, sorry for what we did to the ozone layer), a transparent DualShock controller was famously sold for the original PlayStation in 1998. The idea was to give customers an ever-so-slightly fun option, since they’d been complaining about the drab, boring gray that was the only color scheme available at launch. (This was well before the age of cutesy K-pop collaborations. You kids seriously don’t know how good you have it.)
Now, I in no way mean to imply that Sony is doing this to distract people from its plan to stop producing discs starting in January 2028. I would never dare to insinuate such a thing. It is surely pure coincidence that the tech giant is promoting a product that harkens back to the late ’90s just a few months after announcing the death of what was arguably the most beloved staple of late-’90s gaming. What I am saying is that if reading about this little blast from the past made you pause your heated attempt to jailbreak a PS5 on principle for a few seconds, that’s all the better for Sony.
The Prism controllers go up for preorder at 10 a.m. ET on Nov. 10 through PlayStation Direct and through “participating retailers.” The official launch is Feb. 4. MSRP is $84.99, but can you really put a price on fond childhood memories? (I guess Sony can, in this case.) Matching console covers are available “in limited quantities” for $74.99, which, you know what, why not?
