Sony had some explaining to do as it offered its excuse of why the familiar rumble feature was missing from its PS3 game controller. According to Sony, in a press release given at the E3 convention, the rumble attribute was not included because the new motion detection units within the PS3 controller made it impossible to include the rumble feature.
The press latched onto this and scoffed at Sony,s pretentious explanation due to the common knowledge within the game industry that Sony was sued by the patent holders of the rumble technology. The ruling ordered Sony to pay 90 million dollars in back patent fees and to stop production of Dual Shock controllers. Sony is in its last efforts to appeal the decision. Previous appeals by Sony were struck down by the court.
Immersion Corp. president, Victor Viegas told Gamasutra, "[We,ve] offered them numerous solutions to the problem. I don’t believe it’s a very difficult problem to solve, and Immersion has experts that would be happy to solve that problem for them. [They have] taken aggressive positions with the use of patents to try to invalidate our claims, and have argued that Immersion committed fraud. There’s been quite a lot of legal activity and a lot of unnecessary energy expended over this."
The “numerous solutions” have to do with Sony simply owning up to its patent infringements and paying Immersion Corp. the licensing fees that are due. Microsoft, who was also named in the original lawsuit, has settled with Immersion for the sum of $26 million.
