Sony Once Worked on a Console That Fit Entirely Inside a DualShock Controller
Sony developed a prototype console called PlayStation PUGA that was built entirely into a DualShock controller, designed for the Brazilian market to bypass import restrictions, but it was never released due to licensing and royalty issues.
The early years of gaming and home consoles were wonderfully creative, whether in the design of the consoles and controllers, the games themselves, or the many bizarre tricks that development teams had to use to work around the hardware limitations of the era. Now a special prototype that Sony worked on has been revealed—a complete console inside a DualShock controller, a product intended for the Brazilian market to bypass the country's import restrictions at the time.
The console, known as the PlayStation PUGA, was revealed during a lecture (which is fascinating in its own right) by Brian Watson, who worked at Sony for four decades. Watson presented the PUGA and explained that it was designed to be manufactured in Brazil to circumvent the restrictions of that time. On the technical side, it featured an OMAP 3530 processor running at 650MHz and was intended to emulate the PS1. The console, which as mentioned was built into a DualShock controller, connected to the TV using standard banana cables of that era and was powered by batteries with roughly 20 hours of battery life, with the ability to store about 10 games on a 4GB memory card. According to Watson, the PUGA was a good console, but it was never launched due to game rights and licensing issues for the console, and the very low royalty payments (about ten cents per copy) that developers would receive from it.