Sony Shocks New PlayStation Owners

ATLANTA - At Sony's media briefing Wednesday morning, it announced that starting June 16, stores will start receiving new configurations of PlayStation hardware which include the Dual Shock analog control pad. The new config will sell for the current US$149.99 MSRP. You may remember that Japan got a similar configuration last winter when the Dual Shock became SCE's standard pad.

At the conference, Phil Harrison, executive vice president research and development and third party relations, laid to rest the rumors that Sony didn't bring the original vibrating analog pad out in the US because of patent conflicts with Atari. Instead, he said that the company did not bring the pad out because it knew the Dual Shock was not far away.