Sony's Lisa DualSense Lands Amid a Year of PS5 Backlash
Sony's new Blackpink-branded DualSense arrives for $85 while the same company raises PS5 prices, kills discs, and shutters a studio. The timing tells its own story.
Sony has finally shown what a year of quiet negotiations with Blackpink's Lisa produces: a DualSense controller with her signature bangs and eyes painted across the touchpad, stars scattered around the grips, and an "LL" monogram set against Chroma Pearl, the colorway Sony says is her personal favorite. It ships October 2 for preorder on PlayStation Direct at $85, the standard price for a limited-edition pad these days, with wider retail availability from October 30. A matching run of T-shirts, hoodies, caps, and keychains carries the same illustrated gaze.
The pairing is not new. Lisa joined Sony's roster last year, sitting alongside comedian King Bach, NFL wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase, and NBA veteran LeBron James in the PlayStation Playmakers program, a lineup built to put famous faces next to the console rather than in front of a specific game. This controller is that strategy's most literal product yet: a peripheral designed around a person's aesthetic rather than a title's.
A soft launch for a hard year
It lands into a 2026 that has not been kind to PlayStation's reputation. Sony has raised PS5 console prices, confirmed it will stop producing game discs in favor of an all-digital future starting in 2028, closed Bluepoint Studio outright, and walked away from funding Hideo Kojima's Physint. Each of those moves drew the kind of backlash that does not fade because a new accessory shows up in the same news cycle.
A celebrity-branded controller does not undo any of that, and it was never built to. Marketing budgets and studio budgets live in different columns on the same spreadsheet, and a Playmakers collaboration is cheap next to the cost of keeping a development team on payroll. Putting a pop star's face on a $85 accessory generates press coverage, retailer shelf space, and a fresh wave of preorders, all without touching the harder, more expensive questions about discs, pricing, or which studios survive the next round of cuts.
What buyers are actually paying for
- A DualSense with Lisa's illustrated bangs and eyes on the touchpad
- Star motifs and an "LL" monogram over the Chroma Pearl finish
- A separate apparel line: shirts, hoodies, caps, and keychains
- $85 list price, preorders from October 2, retail from October 30
None of that changes what happened at Bluepoint, where the people who lost their jobs are not comforted by a colorway named after a favorite Blackpink member's aesthetic. The controller sells fine either way.