Coming to the US market soon is the Sony Playstation 3 Dual Shock 3. Finally rumble has come back to the PS3 platform. The reason why Dual Shock 3 wasn't available when the PS3 launched was because back in 2002, Sony and Microsoft were sued by a company called Immersion for patent infringement on their force feedback technology. In 2007 the lawsuit was settled with Sony and voila... Dual Shock 3!

Unfortunately many of you are wondering just exactly what to do. There's the typical PS black version which will be available in the US on April 15th 2008 and there's also an Asian version that's white and silver which isn't. Then there's also the old PS2 controller that has rumble already. So which one should you get?

Let's first check price.
Dual Shock 3 US version will be sold around $55
The Asian Dual Shock 3 version could be had for around $60 shipped.
The PS2 Dual shock for $30 (or if you are upgrading from a PS2... free) + $15 for the USB adaptor.

At this point you're thinking... well. Dual Shock 2 because it's cheaper. Hold on. If you have games that has tilt sensing functionality, you lose that. Games such as Jericho and Heavenly Sword (and probably flight simulator style games) will be missing that extra feature that makes the game play more interactive.

Also it is said that the Dual Shock 3 is now directional. That means if you are playing a shooting game and is shot on the right, the control should "jump" left. Since there's no game I can test this on, it's speculation. The Dual Shock 3 is a bit heavier(about the added weight of 1AA and 1AAA battery) and the action buttons are raised a bit but other otherwise it feels very similar to the original PS3 controller. The Dual Shock capability does not effect the controller at all. All games I re-tried felt exactly the same. I even tried a couple of my old PS2 games with rumble and it felt GOOD to have it back.

So what's the difference between the Asian and US version? Available color and that is it. I got a white one shipped from Asian and the package and the controller looks EXACTLY the same.

So basically it boils down to:
Dual Shock 3 is a must have even with the added $10-$15 price over the original PS3 controller. Other than color, the Asia one is exactly the same.