There aren’t that many manufacturers of sim-racing peripherals in the premium segment. Like luxury car brands, high-end sim-racing peripherals are expensive and elitist.

There are a few brands in this segment, including the legendary Simucube. This manufacturer is considered to be the go-to for all professional motorsport drivers, and in fact collaborates with several teams and racers in the discipline to develop its products. A few years ago, Simucube released the first active pedal for sim-racing (the Simucube Active Pedal), exploiting the advantages of an electric motor to provide reactive feedback and a very high level of customization for pedalboards.

The brand is based in Finland, with a team of over 50 people across all disciplines. As far as its products are concerned, its preferred market remains PCs, with a range covering the needs of the most demanding virtual racers. However, many racers can’t afford a high-end gaming PC, and generally turn to consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series X or S.

The question is: are Simucube peripherals compatible with home consoles? And the answer is no, Simucube is not compatible with Playstation or Xbox for various reasons.

The first, and most important, is that consoles have a compartmentalized ecosystem. Even if, on the hardware level, the PS5 has a variant of PC architecture thanks to the fact that it uses a custom APU from AMD, the software (or operating system) is very closed, limiting third-party brands from exploiting the console’s functionalities.

Secondly, Sony is to collaborate with Simucube to offer controllers that will be integrated into the manufacturer’s sim-racing peripherals to make this brand’s products Playstation-compatible. Currently, the Japanese firm is working with Thrustmaster, Logitech and Fanatec to make their peripherals compatible with the PS5, and this collaboration is not new. These three brands have been on the market for over 20 years, whereas Simucube has only been around for 10.

Thirdly, sim-racing is a question of settings, and on this point, consoles are completely off the mark. On PCs, you can fine-tune the feedback provided by the Direct Drive base via software. On consoles, this is very limited, except for Fanatec, which offers a good level of customization for its bases, which are PS5-compatible via firmware.

If you’re looking for quality sim-racing peripherals that are also high-performance and adapted to the needs of console-based virtual pilots, Fanatec has a wide catalog of Direct Drive bases, steering wheels and pedalboards to help you improve your driving skills.