A former Sony employee has revealed that at one point in his career he worked on a device called the PlayStation Puga, intended for the Brazilian market.
Long time developer Brian Watson he recently gave a lecture about his 40 years of work in the gaming industry. Watson had a rich career during which he worked at the forerunner of Rockstar Games (DMA Design) and at Sony. During the lecture, he discovered an interesting fact that was not widely known before.
Namely, Watson says that twenty years ago he was developing a code-named product at Sony PlayStation Puga. It was, in short, a PlayStation 1 console housed inside a DualShock controller.
The whole thing ran on batteries and connected directly to the TV via a composite audio-video cable. Of course, the PlayStation Puga didn’t have a CD reader, but PS1 games were stored on a small card. And that’s exactly why the whole thing didn’t come to life in the end.
According to Watson, Sony was unable to agree on licenses with game makers that were supposed to be included with the PlayStation Puga. They negotiated, among other things, with Rockstar Games.
Admittedly, if the project had come to life, we would not have seen it in our area anyway. It was a PlayStation intended for the Brazilian market, where it was supposed to be produced, and it was supposed to be sold for a very small amount, given that the PlayStation 3 was already current in other markets at the time.