Shuhei Yoshida has confirmed that the Lightbar, one of the new features of the Dualshock 4 Controller, can’t be switched off.
As has been known for a while, the brand new Lightbar on the PS4’a new Dualshock controller is used with the Playstation Camera to act as a motion sensor, in the same way as the PS Move device and can be used by game developers to increase the game’s experience or add extra features, such as with the health bars in the upcoming Killzone Shadow Fall.
It has been confirmed, though, that the Lightbar can’t be turned off by Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony’s worldwide studios. This was via Twitter, when responding to a question of if it can be switched off in order to save battery life. Yoshida’s response, was quite simply, “no”.
This is not exactly what I would call a huge deal, but it would be a nice function to be able to switch it off, especially if you don’t own the camera or even if you do, if you happen to be playing a game that does not support it. It may indeed shorten the battery life of the controller while not on charge, but it is very hard to say.
