How do controller buttons work

When you press a button, the switch is turned on, and when you lift your finger off, the switch is turned off. Inside the controller are circuits — these are like roads — they carry the ON and OFF electrical messages back to the computer. Now as games can be fast and furious, this can mean dozens of messages rushing around every second!

The messages are labelled so that the computer can tell which message came from which button. This is not the case with all types of games though. For instance, side-scrolling type games, like Shovel Knight , do not allow for camera control so you do not need to use the right analog stick at all.

These are the main buttons that you will use on the controller to interact with the game you are playing. Based on the type of game and who made it, you can use these buttons to interact with characters and other objects, jump with your character, fire weapons, or even interact with a menu. The conventions for what these buttons do in each game are different. This is why I highly recommend reading through the controls menu in any game to get familiar with how things work.

Luckily most modern games do an excellent job of walking you through the control scheme during the tutorial section. These buttons are often referred to as the shoulder buttons. In some shooter type games, these can be used to fire weapons though this is more commonly done with the Trigger buttons — L2, R2. In other games, these buttons can also be used in addition to the face buttons x, square, triangle, circle to interact with objects in the game.

These buttons are referred to as the trigger buttons. The majority of modern games that require aiming and firing a weapon will use these buttons to do so. The common convention for these games is to press L2, aim with the right analog stick, and press R2 to fire. As a new PlayStation gamer, you may not even know that these buttons exist. These controls are used more commonly in games than you might think. The Dualshock 4 controller is the first PlayStation controller to incorporate social sharing features right onto the controllers.

Systems like the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation Move utilize motion controls in addition to button prompts. These game controllers use accelerometers. Tiny chips keep wafers in place with springs. When the remote is swung around, the springs are pressed by the wafers. The more the controller moves, the more the wafer shifts with it. The accelerometer measures how each wafer is moving in relation to the others and the rest of the controller and the system translates that into a synced movement.

Some controllers also have a rumble feature, which goes off when certain actions are performed. Motors are in the handles or grips of the controllers. These motors hold an unbalanced weight that spins when power is supplied to the motor. This translates to a powerful vibration through the controller. In their own way, game controllers are like smaller, specialized computers. By using circuitry and electricity, they perform dedicated functions that assist the user.

Of course, the trade-off for faster loading is a significantly smaller amount of storage on the cartridge. But don't let that fool you. The CDs are just as susceptible to scratches and intense heat as normal audio CDs -- even more so in fact, since a scratch on a game CD can make it totally unusable. The games available for the PlayStation cover all of the categories. It has, by far, the largest game library of any of the consoles on the market today. Special thanks to the staff at BuyRite Video for their assistance with the articles in this series.

Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Video Game Systems. How PlayStation Works. By: Jeff Tyson. The PlayStation console was once the biggest seller among video game systems. See more video game system pictures. PlayStation Console " ". When you look inside a PlayStation, you can see the processor and memory chips.

Processor clock speed: Resolution: x maximum five interlaced and four non-interlaced modes supported Colors: bit 16,, maximum; other modes supported are 4-bit 16 , 8-bit and bit 32, Maximum sprite size: pixels high x pixels wide Polygon rendering: , polygons per second Geometry engine: Provides additional hardware rendering of polygons to include Gouraud shading, texture-mapping and lighting effects Memory: 1 MB RAM MPEG decoder.

Channels: 24 Sample rate: