Sony wants to patent technology that turns bananas into controllers

Whether you are gaming on a PC or consoles, a good controller is a must for a lot of games.

These days tech companies are investing more and more into the development of controllers which offers new features and some never-before-seen technologies, all in efforts to make our experience better and more immersive.

Sony is definitely amongst those companies that are constantly trying to improve their input devices and we can safely say that DualSense, the PlayStation 5 controller, is one of the most advanced controllers currently available.

But sometimes, simple is better, and apparently, Sony thinks so as well, judging by one of their latest patent applications.

As spotted by GamesIndustry, Sony has recently filed a patent application for a technology that will allow players to use literally any "non-luminous passive object" as a controller.

Some of the examples given in the patent application are mugs, pens, glasses or even bananas, which are used on the example images accompanying the application.

No, it is not an April Fool's joke (Picture: Sony)

Sony states that the idea behind is to help those players who only own one controller, but we doubt that the intentions are really that altruistic.

"It would be desirable if a user could use an inexpensive, simple and non-electronic device as a video game peripheral," the application states.

The technology works by the camera scanning an object in the hands and finding the object's place in space, and allows the player to control the movement by moving the object in their hands. The camera can also be used to map virtual input buttons on the object in which case players can press virtual buttons for additional controls.

• Read more: PlayStation Plus free games March 2021

The patent application even mentions a "two-object controller" demonstrated with two oranges, which players might use in some games that require a separate controller for each hand, like VR games.

There is definitely a lot of interesting applications for this technology, and we could see this being used for some future games that maybe require interaction with the player's surrounding, but most of the time patents are just that, patents, and rarely develop into some concrete products, so don't be too excited about beating people with bananas.