Sony envisions a future where a banana is a video game controller

Gamers love turning weird shit into controllers, including but not limited to Pomegranates, Lightsabers, Bananas, and loaf. Apparently, Sony wants to get into this action, according to a patent that recently emerged from GamesIndustry.biz Here is a method by which household items can be turned into controls.

Sony filed one patent for a means of detecting a “passive non-luminous object held by a user” and transforming it into a video game controller. “It would be desirable if a user could use an inexpensive, simple, non-electronic device as a video game peripheral,” the patent says, saying what we all think. Options such as an orange, a banana or are mentioned as examples two

Oranges or bananas. A camera could recognize the elements so that they could be used as a controller, or a camera could “recognize a user’s finger in the received images” to match “the position of the virtual button”. In images attached to the patent, this essentially means that a banana will be provided with virtual buttons in case you want to awkwardly prick the banana instead of swinging it around.

I guess Sony’s ideal player has some fresh fruit in the house. This is just a patent application so who knows if it will ever become a reality. My colleague Ethan has since developed his own version that you can get practically for free.