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PS3 Finally Ready to Rumble?
An anonymous reader writes "Sony has finally settled its longstanding legal dispute over infringement of Immersion Corporation's force feedback patents, which reportedly led to Sony's decision to remove rumble technology from the PS3 controller, by agreeing to pay Immersion at least $150.3 million in damages and royalties. The agreement presumably will result in rumble and perhaps other of Immersion's force-feedback technologies being incorporated in future Sony controllers. Microsoft previously settled a similar lawsuit brought by Immersion, but Sony hung on tenaciously despite complaints about its controller products and disappointing PS3 sales." There's no guarantee that the tech will show up in the Sixaxis controller, of course. After all, rumble is a 'last-gen' feature.
Good job Sony!
It has been hilarious to watch Immersion get increasingly desperate over the last year or so as Sony made it crystal clear that they weren't going to just cave in like Microsoft did and hand over millions in cash. Immersion thought they hit the jackpot and assumed Sony would just cave in on the PS3 hardware. Sucks to be them.
In the end few people really care about rumble. It was a novelty back in the N64 days, but it really hasn't been missed from the PS3 controller. The only people who seem to have a strong opinion of rumble in the PS3 almost universally don't have a PS3 but do own another console...
So we are probably going to see a PS3 controller with rumble at some point in the future. Or maybe we won't. It doesn't really matter.
Those will look really nice on the shelf next to the dozen or so PS3s I see in every store as I try to find a Wii :(
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