Sony just took its biggest step in increasing the hardware accessibility of its devices by bringing the new controller.

With the new award-winning project Leonardo, everyone can play games.

Project Leonardo is designed to help people with limited motor skills to enjoy their gaming experience. In conjunction with other major news, it was unveiled during the CES 2023 press conference on January 4 on Sony’s CES. The in-development controller circulated gamepads and buttons with directional inputs, drawing comparisons to Microsoft’s Adaptive Controller. Of course, to the prevailing belief of its rivals, Project Leonardo looks so different and still holds the theme of dual sense.

Project Leonardo will try to make gaming more accessible for everyone as a customizable gamepad which lets players find tools for themselves, change the shapes and sizes of stick caps as well as map buttons.

The recent years have improved the accessibility of software, especially 2022s God of War. A wide range of benefits cater to the very broadest of disability problems, Ragnarok has been given a lot of support. The Indie game Tunic, created by Andrew Shouldice, also has No Fail Mode without combat challenges for players who want to focus on exploring and story development. Despite the aversion to many games, PlayStations had many options for accessibility, so they weren’t able to make sure that many games were part of that department. Yet now Project Leonardo can be used by itself or paired with two DualSense controllers while being recognised as a single gamepad by the PS5, giving flexibility and helping people to get started or control games.

Customization of Project Leonardo is also being streamlined with DualSense integration.

Here’s what Tom Morimoto and Sony designer, recently released a report in the PlayStation blog: What exactly does this say about that project?

We had the idea of bringing together all the players who enjoyed the gaming world. Our team tested an estimated dozen designs with accessibility experts and looked for solutions that would address key challenges for effective controller use. We decided to use a split controller that allows fast full-form left-to-right thumbstick repositionability, can be used without needing to be held and very flexible switch and button and stick cap swapping.

For that purpose, Sony partnered with a handful of organizations that helped the design by testing draft models and consulting. The games that need to be created can be created by AbleGamers, SpecialEffects and Stack Up.

Players can mount Project Leonardo’s on a tripod, a wheelchair tray or a nearby table. The controller can also incorporate an entire array of accessible switches and accessories, from 3 mm AUX ports on the side, making the experience much more enjoyable.

Project Leonardo is just a codename, and not all is known when it comes to terms of its price and time. In other words, it’s nice to see Sony embrace this severely underserved gaming niche.

The dual-Sense Edge will be on the 26th of every month.