Sony Had Developed a Controller with a PS1 Inside But the Project Was Canceled

In the past, Sony developed a truly unique project without ever launching it commercially. This project is known as PlayStation PUGA and was developed with the Brazilian market in mind (aiming to circumvent import restrictions by producing the product in the country).

A Controller with a PS1 Inside

In fact, it is a controller with ten pre-installed PS1 games inside. The initial concept is similar to many other plug-and-play consoles that were very popular in the past, especially thanks to various Japanese brands. Below is the video in which Watson shows the prototype canceled by Sony (starting from minute 56):

It was Brian "Biscuit" Watson, a former Sony developer, who revealed the existence of the project. The console was designed to be affordable and easy to use. Inside it had a TI-OMAP 3530 chip with an ARM CPU, and the whole system was powered by four AAA batteries. The "controller" had no screen, just a video output.

Users could connect the PlayStation PUGA to an external screen to play the pre-installed titles, with no option to add new ones. According to Watson, the reason for the product's lack of launch was a licensing issue concerning the games to be pre-installed, which arose within Sony itself and was not resolved.

The technical and legal details that led to the halt of the PlayStation PUGA are not fully clear, but it’s evident that the project would have been a very unique evolution of Sony's gaming ecosystem. Today, the units of this controller/console would likely be collector's items.