Recently, a new Sony patent shows that the company appears to be developing a controller with a foldable joystick.
Sony said in its patent application that they were trying to invent a comfortable and portable game controller that would not protrude from the controller surface in folding joysticks.
In the patent, Sony claims that the current choice of joystick controllers is very limited, and most of the use of comfortable joystick controllers is not very portable, because there is an obvious problem: the joystick part of the controller must be the same size as the user's hand to make it comfortable, which makes it very impractical. The company further said that while the analog thumb stick can be carried around, it is not comfortable to use for a long time due to the friction between the user's thumb and the controller surface.
The third controller option is the thumb stick, which is similar to the joystick in many ways. Thumb sticks have a protruding part that players can move with their thumbs, and while thumb sticks are smaller and more comfortable, they are still not very portable because they protrude over the surface of the controller and can easily be damaged.
The most basic part of a joystick consists of a joystick that rotates on a base, and a mechanism on the base reports an angle or direction — and sometimes an amplitude — to the device it controls. Apparently, a high-tech controller has many other internal moving parts and circuitry that have caused problems with some PlayStation controllers, but Sony's new product will include more parts and circuitry as it tries to plug in some parts that can retract the joystick.
Part of the patent describes conventional methods for achieving this function, such as the use of rubber bands or elastane fibers, springs or pistons. But it also includes a detailed scientific explanation outlining the use of a mechanism known as a "non-Newtonian fluid."
It's hard to say whether such a "non-Newtonian fluid" foldable joystick controller will emerge, as patent filing is usually just a very early step that will go through a lengthy development process.