New Sony Patent Aims To Revolutionize Controller Tech With… Bananas

No, you read that right.

Sony recently filed for a patent that essentially aims to turn any handheld object around you into a Playstation controller. And while that could mean anything from a pen to a potato peeler, the patent explicitly uses a Banana as its chief example.

Now, plantain lovers be warned: this, at present, is only a patent. So, it’s possible that BananaSense™ will never see the light of day. But it’s still wild to see where Sony’s head is at when it comes to gaming innovations. For now, this is Sony’s vision for the banana controller, with its X and triangle keys:

The patent goes on to outline the functions of a controller as it relates to gaming consoles and underscores how the ability to turn any object into a controller has merit.

“Most video games allow players to provide player inputs by one or more of: pressing physical buttons on a games controller, performing motion with a motion controller, or making gestures with their limbs.”

Patent

“Motion controllers,”

Patent

“typically include either light sources or motion sensors (such as e.g. gyroscopes, accelerometers) which enable the position of the motion controller to be tracked during playing of the video game. It would be desirable if a user could use an inexpensive, simple and non-electronic device as a video game peripheral.”

Patent

How will this work? A camera gets images of the non-luminous item in your hands, and tracks the items based on pixels, contours, and/or colors in the images rather than QR codes or other such tracking techniques. The natural extension to this would be that games that could employ this tech would come with a set of pre-decided objects that could be used as controllers.

The patent also goes on to talk about how the banana’s movement can be applied to 3D space which could be applied to the in-game camera. So, Sony seems to be going for VR applications for this tech as well. 

It’s too soon to say how this is going to pan out for Sony. But the chances that you’ll lose money/tech or hurt someone when you throw this controller across the room in classic gaming frustration are low. And that in itself is pretty revolutionary.

About Sony

Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo. The company operates as one of the most comprehensive media companies on the planet and also holds the distinctions of being the largest video game console company and the second largest video game publisher in the world. Its gaming and network services arm Sony Interactive Entertainment (formerly Sony Computer Entertainment) is best known for producing the popular line of PlayStation consoles.