Sony once crammed an entire original PlayStation into a DualShock controller. It connected directly to your TV. They called it PlayStation Puga. Then they scrapped it.
The project was real — an actual prototype that stuffed PS1 hardware into a controller shell. No console box needed. Plug it in, play. A retro dream, basically.
So what killed it? Money, as usual. Sony reportedly offered game studios just 10 cents per unit sold. Developers balked. You can’t build a game ecosystem when the people making the games get paid in pocket change per copy.
The economics didn’t work on the other side either. Cramming PS1 guts into that form factor wasn’t cheap. At 10 cents per game, Sony would’ve needed millions of software sales just to break even on hardware.
The project never made it past the prototype stage. It’s probably sitting in a Sony vault somewhere, next to the PSP Phone and the PlayStation Mouse.
Would it have sold? Hard to say. Retro gaming is huge right now. A controller that doubles as a console has a certain appeal. But Sony’s bean counters ran the numbers and walked away.
