New patented Sony tech would let players use anything as a controller, even bananas

We can all agree on one thing, gaming is an expensive hobby to get into. Besides the usually prohibitive costs of gaming hardware, especially gaming PCs, players have to worry about controllers. Do you want to play with more than one person at a time? That’s another entire game’s worth of cash you have to spend just for another controller. There’s clearly an issue here, and Sony wants to solve it. Just not in the way you would think. Instead of making cheaper controllers, the company has filed a patent for tech that would let players make a controller out of anything. 

In the patent, discovered by GamesIndustry.biz, Sony finds that controllers usually serve as a barrier to people that want to play games. “As will be appreciated, a limited number of peripherals may limit a player’s ability to access all of a video game’s features (e.g. multiplayer, VR, etc.),” they state. “Even if a player is in possession of multiple peripherals, each of these may need to be charged regularly in order to be usable.”

Sony’s solution is to give users “an inexpensive, simple and non-electronic device as a video game peripheral.” The peripheral that Sony imagines its users playing with is essentially anything within arm’s reach. If you have a mug and pencil next to you, those are your character’s sword and shield. However, the example given in the patent is a banana. 

Essentially, the tech would work by means of a camera pointed at the player. Much like motion controls, the camera would track the movements of whatever item players are holding and bind different movements to inputs. 

It’s not clear just yet if players will ever see this tech come to markets — or, frankly, if it’s an April Fools joke that was leaked early. Many patents that Sony files are clever ideas never to be seen again.