PlayStation has gone full vaporwave. During its State of Play showcase on September 3, Sony unveiled two special DualSense controllers themed around “GTA 6,” and the result looks precisely like what Vice City would do to a slab of plastic.
The bodies come in black and white, with blue, purple and pink gradients washing across them. That’s the Vice City palette — the “Grand Theft Auto” city modeled heavily on real-world Miami — mapped onto a gamepad.
Each one costs $84.99. Since a regular DualSense goes for $74, roughly 11 dollars of that is the paint job.
The dates you actually need
Pre-orders open September 10 in the United States at 10 a.m. Eastern, while the official launch lands on November 19 — the same day the game arrives.
According to PlayStation’s blog, the controllers will be sold in “limited quantities” only. No actual figure was given, which is an answer of sorts on its own.
With a game this anticipated, some of the hype spilling over onto the surrounding hardware is only to be expected. Sony isn’t saying whether that means a few thousand units or a warehouse packed with them.
Don’t expect extra hardware for the extra money
What you’re getting here are standard DualSense controllers. There are no special features, and nothing resembling the DualSense Edge, with its additional mappable buttons and swappable stick modules.
In other words, the $84.99 covers the finish and the branding — nothing more. In fairness, that figure sits right alongside other game-specific special edition pads, so nobody’s being gouged. Sony is simply doing the usual thing.
The wait behind all of this
The franchise’s most recent entry, “Grand Theft Auto 5,” launched back in 2013. That single fact explains why the gaming world is so primed for “Grand Theft Auto 6.”
As launch approaches, details have been leaking out from places like Netflix, arriving in parallel with news about the special edition hardware tied to the game.
“Grand Theft Auto 6” looks set to be big, expensive, loud and something of a spectacle, so a flashy pair of controllers fits the assignment neatly. When everyone you know vanishes from work for a few days in November, at least they’ll be holding something that matches.