Sony wants to let you use bananas as PlayStation controllers

Sony’s going bananas.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed an eyebrow-raising patent application to use bananas as PlayStation controllers. The patent is fairly bizarre, referring to a new method of using inexpensive, simple and non-electronic devices as videogame peripherals. To demonstrate this theory, Sony uses a banana.

The original patent filing’s description reads, “It would be desirable if a user could use an inexpensive, simple and non-electronic device as a video game peripheral [...] The present disclosure seeks to address or at least alleviate some of the above-identified problems.”

Sony plans to ‘alleviate’ these problems by using a, “non-luminous passive object being held by a user.” You know, like a banana.

The patent filing is pretty loose on specific details, but an additional illustration shows a banana with virtual buttons located on the fruit, as an example of what they’re trying to do.

Theoretically, you could pick up any old household item to play games - like a book, coffee mug or pencil case. Buy some Tic-Tacs from the grocery store, and then play God of War with them at home. That’s the general idea.

This is just a patent application, so we might not see these plans ever come to fruition - but it would be nice if people could skip buying pricey DualSense controllers and use a banana to play games instead. Bananas are cheaper, after all. Taste better, too.