Sony will let PlayStation owners use bananas instead of joysticks

If you believe patent applications Japanese company, in the future it plans replace game controllers with bananas… Sony engineers probably think turning fruit into joysticks is easier than making existing controllers cheaper.

Any non-luminous object (banana, mug, potato, the third volume of “War and Peace”) can become an improvised joystick. Buttons are glued to this item to control the game, and the cameras in the VR headset are responsible for recognizing movements.

The initiative seems commendable because PS VR (like any VR hardware) costs a lot of money. This market is developing slowly, because not everyone can play the conditional Half Life: Alyx and other VR projects. And here Sony is developing, albeit ambiguous, but still a solution to the problem. True, there are inconsistencies.

We don’t take into account the fact that using food, kitchen utensils and furniture as a joystick is a super weird idea. But even without this there is something to complain about. The company’s patent says that the virtual reality system will project controls onto the object in the user’s hands…

This means that there will be no physical response, which will noticeably spoil the gaming experience and bring tremendous difficulties to those players who have never held real joysticks in their hands. How can they navigate and control the game? The threshold of entry will rise, if only because of the unbearable management, which will have to be significantly rethought.

In addition, would it be more expensive to implement a system for projection of buttons and capturing the movement of third-party objects than putting a pair of standard controllers in a box with a prefix / VR-helmet? Will helmets / goggles rise in price? At the same time, there will certainly be difficulties with the choice of an object that is suitable for the role of a joystick. Size, color, shape: anything can play a role.

It should be noted that at Sony they like to dream of strange things. Last year they patented a robot friendwho sits next to you and watches you play the PlayStation. And in 2013, the corporation wanted to implement ad inserts into the game console that could be skipped by waving Move-controllers in their hands.

Despite the slight smack of absurdity (although there are no patents), Sony engineers are still great. They are looking for ways to reduce the cost of VR systems and increase their popularity. The belief of such corporations in the promise of virtual reality suggests that a revolution in the world of video games is not far off, and VR will soon become commonplace at the level of a classic gamepad or keyboard and mouse. It will benefit all of us.

But do not forget that the patent application is in most cases a cool black and white picture with a description in the spirit of sci-fi movies. It’s not a fact that Sony’s idea will even live to see implementation.