So I went into a Canadian EB games today, and as had been reported online, they were stocking Dualshock 4s. I picked one up and quickly brought it home for testing on the PC.

First off, the thing feels great! Sticks; triggers; handles - all top notch improvements over the Dualshock 3.

Now we come to the bummer part. While my Windows 8 PC does detect the DS4 as a gamepad when plugged in with a Micro USB cable, it does not work flawlessly out of the box. While all of the buttons register, one particular issue makes games unplayable: the X & Y rotation are mapped to the triggers instead of the right stick. This means that, as the triggers are depressed at their default position, those axes are at a value of 0 (instead of the desired 50, or center position). The end result: constantly spinning camera! I tested this on multiple Steam games and found the issue to be persistent. If the issue wasn't present, however, it was because the controller wasn't recognized at all (as was the case with Bastion).

Knowing full well that I would probably get nowhere, I contacted Sony support and asked a) if they had any documentation on the DS4 and b) if Sony was planning on putting out drivers for the DS4 when the PS4 launches. The answers were "no" and "we don't have an answer at this time", respectively.

Anybody out there with a DS4 that found a workaround to this?

p.s. before somebody says something along the lines of "well it's Windows 8, so I'm not surprised that it isn't working for you", please note that a score of unboxing videos on Youtube show this same problem on multiple Operating Systems.

I imagine someone will eventually create a MotioninJoy-like program that will make the DS4 work more flawlessly on the PC. I'm becoming more and more certain though that Sony will never release some sort of API that will make the DS4 work as seamless as the 360 did on PC.

All right, this took some poking around, but I finally found a solution that seems to be working for most PC games:

Download the following: https://code.google.com/p/x360ce/downloads/detail?name=x360ce%20vibmod%203.1.4.1.zip&can=4&q=

This is program that emulates the 360 controller; no viruses or malware included (according to Avast anti-virus).

Extract the files and copy "x360ce" and "xinput1_3.dll" into the the game's main directory (the one containing the main .exe for the game). Then just run the game, and it should recognize the DS4 as a 360 controller!

*Note* there is one extra step when setting up games that use Valve's Source engine:

The "x360ce" file goes where it normally would (same folder as the .exe), but the "xinput1_3.dll" file needs to go into the folder that contains "inputsystem.dll". This is usually the "bin" folder.

As a Mac user, I'll be interested to see if drivers are native to the OS the way they've been since Snow Leopard for the Dual Shock 3.

@andorski: Which is a real shame, it seems like the kind of thing that would be a win-win for them. You sell more controllers and get the brand familiarity.

Forgot to mention one thing: there may already be a file named "inputsystems.dll" in the Source game's "bin" folder. If so, just replace it with the one that comes with x360ce.

Hopefully Sony spits out an official driver at some point, I would imagine it would be a fairly trivial task and would give them another avenue for peripheral sales (Hey Sony, you like to make money right?).

I have already been through all this with the ps3/pc logitech cool stream controller I bought years ago. Until Sony come out and create drivers that will let any and all games that currently work with the gamepads/360 controller work, or devs start building in compatibility, it is not worth it. There was so much hassle involved in setting up all these controllers. It took me 5 years to finally break down and go buy a 360 controller and I have not regretted it (aside from the wire already fraying after a couple months, so shitty.).

@korwin: I think they are more concerned with their console launch than Windows drivers. I'm sure something will happen eventually.

Confirmed