The new rumble controllers for the PS3 will be arriving in the US within the next couple of weeks. Least anyone forget the saga it took to get ‘rumble’ on the PS3 following the lawsuit by Immersion in 2002 on grounds of patent infringement. While Microsoft shrewdly chose to settle out of court Sony’s decision to defend left them with $82 million to pay for the 7 years they had been using the rumble technology previous. In addition to this they were no longer allowed to sell any ‘rumble controllers’ for any of their 3 consoles despite an appeal attempt. Sony tried to play this off as a ‘we have outgrown rumble’ marketing ploy, before making a deal with Immersion to gain the rights to include that horribly ancient technology for their net-Gen console. Something their rivals had from the start.
I will be curious to see sale figures for this controller assuming Sony do not offer to trade in old controllers for free (and I can’t imagine the loss for doing that) as will anyone really want to spend $50 on a new controller? I could make a there’s’ certainly no games buy’ joke here but I’m going to rise above it.
