PS2's about to become hard to find?

by: Chuck - posted: 3/27/2005 11:15:00 PM

According to this article,things just got a little more interesting for Sony as a judge in LA has awarded Immersion Corp at $90.7 million doller award in their lawsuit against Sony over the dual shock controller. Wait there's more, as the judge has also told Sony that they need to stop selling PSOne and PS/2 consoles that use the controller (i.e. most if not all of them). The basis of their lawsuit is the use of force feedback technology to let the users know when something has happened to them on screen (check out the official press release at their website.

If you're wondering why Microsoft isn't impacted by this it's because they settled with Immersion a few years ago for $26 million and agreed to "license" the technology from them for Xbox controllers. The interesting part of that settlement is that Microsoft purchased a small stake in Immersion (about $9M worth) so they have a stake in the outcome.

This raises all kinds of interesting questions for Sony as you would have to think that the controller for the upcoming PS3 would use something very similiar if not exactly the same as the dual shock. I would expect to see Sony appealing this and tying it up in the courts for a while but you have to think we might be seeing a new version of the dual-shock that lacks force feedback come May.