PlayStation may be the favorite in the current round of console wars, but that doesn’t mean it’s resting on its laurels. Sony recently released a video sharing its vision for the future of PlayStation. This included a concept for a futuristic controller, inviting comparisons to the PS3’s boomerang.
Sony’s video imagines the future of PlayStation
Sony recently undertook a prototyping exercise it calls “Creative Entertainment Vision” to explore where it might be in 2034. “Ten years from now,” reads the video description, “we will be living in a more multi-layered world where physical and virtual realities overlap without boundaries. If Sony, as a creative entertainment company, would be filling the world with new Kando [a Japanese word meaning emotion] in that future, what kind of experiential value would we be offering to make that happen?”
Examples from the video include using VR as a tool in game development and a futuristic immersive PlayStation theme park. In addition to an oval smartphone, it also featured a concept for a futuristic controller with a holographic display. However, its unusual design, with two handles on either side of a hollow ring, has led some people online to compare it with the PS3’s boomerang controller concept.
For anyone who doesn’t remember, the boomerang was a crescent-shaped controller concept included in the reveal of the PlayStation 3. It never got further than a mockup, with Sony’s focus groups preferring a more conventional design.
The concept shown in the video looks much more fragile than the boomerang. The apparent impracticality is probably because the video was more about the idea of Sony in 2034 rather than pitching specific products. That said, it would be a big deal if PlayStation could actually make a controller that projects sci-fi holograms.
