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Remember my last attempt to improve the already great DualShock by adding those trigger extensions? Well, here is part II of the series: how to attach a wireless keyboard. It has been announced at the GC2008 press conference and surprisingly enough the hardware is already available at your preferred retail store. Street price EUR 39,90. Remember how long it took for Sony to officially release the PlayTV extension? Over a year. Anyway, it's great to see that keyboard becoming available before the Home Open Beta officially starts (which by the way will be tomorrow ;-). After unwrapping the device, the first thing you notice is its quality. Unlike many third party keyboard extensions, this is an official accessory and it feels and looks like it. The mechanism that ties the keyboard to the controller is very rigid and you almost feel that this keyboard is actually part of the controller. Don't worry that the rumble effect of some games will shake that baby off. Even though the attachment covers the former Select, Start and PS button, there are replacements for those buttons on the keyboard that work as the original ones. No issue there. Next thing to look at is the usability. Well, it has been discussed before wether to placement of the keyboard on top of the controller is better or worse than the solution Microsoft went for: between the handles. In any case you have to move your hands away from the handles in order to reach the keyboard. Not optimal, but I guess that's the compromise we have to take here. What concerns me more are those shift buttons (blue and orange) which are positioned as additional shoulder buttons on the keyboard. Those buttons are used in combination with the keys to reach 2nd and 3rd level functions of the respective key. Remember those HP calculators? This is exactly the same concept. What makes this kind of difficult to use is the fact that for some of the keys you have to press the shoulder button on the same side of the keyboard. So, you press the shoulder key with your index finger and use you thumb to press the key. Not very ergonomic. A better solution would have been to place the keys that can be reached by the right button on the left side and vice versa. Next issue I see is the missing backlight. Yea, I know this would eventually drain the battery much faster but there is no way someone can read those fine prints on the keyboard in a dimmed room. Sorry guys, but you have to learn where those commas and colons are ;-) Last but not least the keyboard has a couple of special features that can not be found on any other keyboard extension so far: Touch Pad Mode: this is really cool as you can use most part of the keyboard as a mouse pad in order to navigate through XMB or within the browser. Believe me it works. It really does. Friends & Messages Key: Well, this is kind of weird as both are located under the same menu on the XMB. So why having 2 different buttons that basically lead you to the same spot? I don't get it.
All in all this is a very useful tool for all online gamers or those who really use the PSN as a mail system to communicate with friends. I am not sure to what extend I will use the keyboard within Home as I am more of a voice chat kind of guy, but you never know. I have mine attached to one of my controllers and I will for sure use it once in a while. P.S. Before someone asks: yes, the keyboard comes with a localized keypad!
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"Don't worry that the rumble will shake it off" or "Don't worry; the rumble won't shake it off"? =)
