With the recent release of Project Cars, one of the burning questions from gamers has been whether Logitech’s impressive G27 wheel is compatible with PS4, like it was with PS3. After searching around however, we came across two different answers. As it turns out, the G27 is, and isn’t, compatible with PS4.
Is the G27 compatible with the Playstation 4?
Well, the initial answer from Logitech was ‘no,’ as you can see from the tweet below in which the peripheral manufacturer confirmed that the G27 lacks the necessary security chip that is needed for the wheel to work together with the PS4.
The plot thickens as the tweet has now been removed.
In an interview with Eurogamer, the security chip-story was confirmed yet again by Mad Catz’s senior product development manager, Richard Neville:
“A PS4 racing wheel is required to include an authenticating security chip which handshakes with the console for verification, as such our older PS3 wheels will not function on PS4.”
Whether we’ll see support for the wheel from either Sony or Logitech is unknown at this point, but what we do know is that Logitech has discontinued the development of console accessories due to a big loss of $180 million dollars in Q3 of FY 2013. This leads us to think there will be no further support and that the G27 will slowly fade away into our memories.
Wait a second
While we haven’t seen any native support so far though, there are various third party peripherals that do the trick, like the Match 4 (or M4), which connects your G27 to your PS4 or Xbox One through a dongle that makes it possible to play racing games with the wheel. The Match 4 remaps the controls to the wheel and tricks the PS4 into thinking the G27 is a compatible controller.
After searching for feedback about this method, we came across various opinions where some people were satisfied by the product, and others were disappointed due to some features not working properly. Looking at some of the comments we see about the M4 there seems to be a 10% dead zone, which to racing fans isn’t acceptable. In response to this “issue”, Jennifer, a worker behind the scenes of the Match 4, claimed that the issue is due to the fact that the small movement is not being detected by the sensor of the racing wheel’s motor. Even with this in mind, racing fans aren’t satisfied as some games seem to be unplayable for them and thus they don’t think the peripheral is worth it’s price.
We checked ourselves whether the Match4 fulfilled its promises or not and, for us, it did not work at all. The wheel spinned around, confirming that it was on and working, but that’s about as far as we got. After updating the Match4 through the given software on the site, the result was still the same. Our recommendation is to await further news or make the step to get a wheel that is currently supported.
Even though there are workarounds available to make it possible to play on the PS4 with the G27, there’s still people who are hoping and waiting for support to be added for both Logitech and Fanatec wheels. A petition is currently running to add support, which has been growing slowly but steadily, making it’s way up to 15,000 supporters just 2 weeks ago.
In the meantime, you may want to check out the superb Thrustmaster RS500.