Sony Ready to Rumble

Sony has been involved in a long standing court case which saw them being sued for breach of patent. This court case against Immersion has seen Sony reportedly drop the rumble feature from the PS3 controller. The Sony press release didn't say anything about the court case. It stated, "Pursuant to the introduction of this new six-axis sensing system, the vibration feature that is currently available on DUALSHOCK and DUALSHOCK 2 controllers for PlayStation and PlayStation 2, will be removed from the new PS3 controller as vibration itself interferes with information detected by the sensor." This has been coupled with Sony basically saying that rumble technology is not integral to game play and that gamers basically don't need it.

However, it seems that Sony and Immersion have sorted out their little ... well, tiff. In which Sony have agreed to pay damages to Immersion. This has led to a very quick "patching up" of their relationship as Sony are being reported to be considering bringing back the rumble feature to the PS3 controller. Even though they were saying that gamers didn't need it they are prepared to bring it back. Maybe, this is due to their cost cutting of the backward compatibility hardware out of the PAL consoles for a saving of approx. $25 per unit.

It irritates me that a corporation says one thing to justify their position (taking the rumble feature out) and not telling the truth (we are having a court case over patent infringement). And then stating things like, It is not necessary with games now to have a rumble feature. Only then to suggest later that the technology will be reintroduced to the controller. What do they think people are stupid? Do they think that we have a five second memory? It just irritates me completely that we are treated as though we are stupid.

Let's face it, Sony have had an interesting couple of years. They have been blamed for the exploding notebook batteries supplied to Dell creating a massive recall. They have been blamed for putting spyware on their CDs creating a massive recall. They had their credit rating downgraded. They have been blamed for infringing patents from Immersion and are having to pay out a massive amount world wide. You could say they are not the best of worldwide corporate citizens at the moment.

The PS3 has not been the launch success they would have liked. Is Sony actually in some trouble?