Bill Gates is having a good day.

Sony has been ordered to stop selling the PlayStation and PlayStation II in the United States. Why? Apparently, their vibrating controllers use stolen technology which is patented and owned by Immersion. Immersion is that company that developed that cool vibrating gameing mouse and the gameing keypad with the built in gamepad for the pc. Sony has also been ordered to pay $90 million in damages to Immersion. Of course Sony is going to appeal the decision, but it sounds like they are pretty much screwed. I expect they will be forced to pull all PlayStations off the shelves, and re-release them with non-vibrating controllers. I wouldn't be surprised if they are forced to raise the shelf price of the PlayStation once this is over and done with.

If you are one of those poor souls who bought a PlayStation (as opposed to the superior Xbox) you might want to stock up on vibrating controllers. It is a safe bet that unless Sony leases the technology from Immersion, you will not be able to buy them anymore once this is over.

In the mean time, I'm sure the Xbox (which has a superior graphics card anyway) will see a dramatic (if temporary) rise in sales. Which, we can be sure, will have Bill Gates dancing all the way to the bank. :)

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