It Turns Out There Will Be A Special ‘Astro Bot’ PlayStation 5 Controller

Back in June, I was lamenting the lack of an announced limited edition DualSense to accompany Sony’s upcoming Astro Bot 3D platformer revival. Well, I seem to have complained too soon, as it was revealed earlier today that there will, in fact, be a shiny new controller released alongside Team ASOBI’s promising retro-inspired adventure on September 6.

The fresh blog post seems to reference the collective moaning over a perceived omission of a special DualSense:

“We know many of you were hoping for this after seeing the game trailer. So, we quickly asked our lovely bots to engineer this beauty and tada! No, no, I’m just kidding; it had been in the making for some time, carefully crafted by the amazing teams at SIE. And what splendid work they did.”

The themed gamepad, which you can pre-order starting August 9 for $79.99, does indeed look cool, even if it doesn’t sport any of my wished-for LED illumination. It’s got Astro Bot’s signature blue and white colorway, physical grooves etched into the plastic shell, as well as two iconic blue eyes adorning the controller’s touchpad. If only they glowed. Oh well.

As far as limited edition peripherals are concerned, I do think this one is a winner, and like I’d mentioned in my previous blog post, it just makes sense to unleash a matching DualSense (pun absolutely intended) with Astro Bot. This is a franchise that prides itself on showing off PlayStation technology, and from what we’ve seen so far of the new game, there looks to be plenty of DualSense vibrational shenanigans waiting for players’ haptic discovery.

Team ASOBI is a proven and wildly creative developer, and I personally am very excited to explore the world they’ve created. It should be all the sweeter now that we’ve got an Astro Bot DualSense to wield, if the limited quantities don’t sell out too fast. Here’s hoping (Astro) bots don’t snatch them all up. Ha.