I decided to buy a Dualshock 4 and see for myself what works and what doesn't.
First off: As promised, the Dualshock 4 works on Windows without the need to install additional drivers.1 Connection is established via a Micro-B USB cable, or via Bluetooth on computers with a Bluetooth receiver. (Hold down the Home and Share buttons together for several seconds to enable Bluetooth pairing mode. The light bar will continuously flash when pairing mode is activated.)
Game support is extremely lacking. The Dualshock 4 is a DirectInput device while the Xbox 360 controller uses XInput, which is the only API that most - if not all - modern games use. In order to use the Dualshock 4 in games that only support the Xbox 360 controller, a wrapper is needed2. Here's to hoping Sony will release drivers to add XInput support to the Dualshock 4.
As for the default key-mapping; even if games accept input from the Dualshock 4, you might want to calibrate the controller to match the Xbox 360 controller's key mapping.
Matching inputs are:
- Left analog stick: main X/Y Axis
- D-Pad: Point of View Hat
- Y/: button 4
- LB/L1: button 5
- RB/R1: button 6
The Xbox 360 controller uses 3 Axis and 2 Rotations as input for its two analog sticks and 2 triggers; the triggers both share the Z-Axis.
The Dualshock 4 on the other hand uses 3 Axis and 3 Rotations for the same.
According to Windows' very own Game controller settings:
The Xbox 360 offers a total of 10 buttons3.
The Dualshock 4 offers a total of 14 buttons4.
1: Tested on Windows 7 and 8.1
2: I found one such wrapper here
3: Excluding the home button, which does not seem to map to a controller input
4: 2 buttons are mapped to the L2/R2 triggers, which are also mapped to the X and Y Rotations
Okay, so I found out the problem, it is due to an app called USB Overdrive taking precedence over the controls of the DS4 controller. If you're like me and you happen to also have a gaming mouse (with no driver support from the maker, pffft Roccat Kova[+]) for FPS games, this app is probably installed on your Mac.
On USB Overdrive settings, don't enable "Any Gaming, Any Application". This is the culprit.
I tried the controller on Steam's Big Picture and also Monaco after and it worked.
Best Answer
From the infos I found on the posted sticker I couldn't find any info regarding the design of the controller. Following info refer to the controller itself, but not to the design:
Yet none of these refer to the design. The only info that also refers to the design seems to be the ASIN, but this one is not included on the sticker.
Because of all this, I say that it's not possible to know the design just from the sticker.