I Played Dune: Awakening on PS5 at Gamescom - Does It Work?

Dune: Awakening was always a PC game to me. A survival RPG built for mouse and keyboard, the kind of thing you hunch over a desk for. So when Funcom brought the console version to Gamescom 2026, I had one question going in: does a game like this even belong on a PlayStation? Skeptical enough that the Dune booth was my very first stop. Right after they made me put on an age verification band, because drugs and giant worms.

Then I picked up the pad, and it surprised me. Positively, mostly.

The controller pulls the experience in two directions at once. Driving is the good direction. Tearing across the dunes on a sandbike with a sandworm on my tail felt made for a gamepad, more fun than it is on PC, which I did not expect. Aiming is the other direction. Melee felt natural, but the second I picked up a gun the pad and I stopped agreeing. It is the shooting that fought me, not the fighting itself, and it is the part I might never get fully comfortable with on console. Some of that is probably just practice.

The bigger worry was performance, and here the news is good. On the show floor Dune: Awakening ran smooth, with only the odd bit of slight lag and nothing that a few more weeks of polish should not fix. It looked clean and genuinely gorgeous. There is a 60fps performance mode planned for launch, which is the one I would live in. One honest caveat: I could not tell for certain whether the demo unit was a base PS5 or a Pro. My gut says base PS5, and if that is true, running this clean is even more impressive, since the footage Funcom released publicly was captured on a Pro.

What actually arrives on September 22 is more than a port. It is the console launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on the same day, alongside the next story chapter that closes out Book One. On Xbox it lands day one on Game Pass, which is an easy way in if you have been curious. Crossplay is not there at the start and is coming later, which is a shame, but not a surprise.

One rumor to file away, unconfirmed by Funcom as far as I have seen: I was told at the booth you will be able to connect mouse and keyboard on console. If that holds up, it is the obvious fix for my aiming problem.

So, first impression? I walked in ready to tell you a survival RPG has no business on a controller. I walked out kind of sold on the port. The bigger question, whether Dune: Awakening actually makes sense solo, is one I want to answer properly on the final build, in its own video once the game is live.