Sony has confirmed that the face buttons on the DUALSHOCK 4 are not pressure sensitive.
Sony’s manager of product planning, Toshimasa Aoki revealed the follwong to VentureBeat:
With the DualShock 3, we were able to get analog data, which games didn’t really use. For DualShock 4, we deleted that, and now it’s all digital. The mechanism inside is a little different, and the data that games get is different.
Pressure sensitivity was very rare and only used in a few games. Both the Xbox and Xbox 360 controllers never used it and many people probably didn’t even know it existed. Removing the feature on DUALSHOCK 4 controllers probably won’t annoy many people.
The only games I know that used them were Metal Gear Solid 2 and one of the Gran Turismo games. In MGS 2, you could lightly press Square to aim without shooting. As for Gran Turismo, you would accelerate lightly by just gently pushing down on the “X” button.
