You read that headline correctly.

A patent discovered today revealed that Sony has a PlayStation Doll in the works, that will connect to PlayStation 3 and PSP. The patent was originally filed back in 2008, but it may still see the light of day. The doll includes several features: a storage medium reader, a media content player, and a wireless receiver and processor.

From the patent:

Where a toy is not licensed to interact fully with a media disk, the PS3 can issue generic interaction instructions that follow the spirit of the interactive content on the disk, allowing the toy for example to give generic positive and negative comments as appropriate. This avoids frustration by the user, who as a child is likely to be unaware of and unconcerned by licensing issues.

Thus alternatively or in addition, rather than sending a specific instruction to perform a specific action, the PS3 could send a more abstract instruction such as 'act surprised' that is interpreted by the toy according to the resources it has available – for example, the ability to throw up its arms, or to select an appropriate phrase from a built in vocabulary. More generally, such a layer of abstraction can simplify and reduce the amount of supplementary data needed, as it allows each type of toy to react in character without the need for different supplementary data tracks. A number of such basic responses could be codified and pre-programmed within suitably enabled toys.

Check out the latest PS3 feature, Move.me.

via PlayStation Lifestyle

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