Playstation rumble pack suits costs Sony more than $152 million

San Jose (CA) - Immersion on Thursday reported its most profitable quarter yet, largely due to a payment from Sony that resulted from infringing on Immersion’s Touch Sense patents. Integrating a vibrating feature into the Playstation controller ended up to be a very expensive adventure for Sony.

Immersion said that its operating income for the first quarter of this year was $131.0 million, which was driven by income that came from "litigation conclusions" in the amount of $134.9 million. Regular business revenues were $6.0 million.

Immersion said that it so far has received from Sony Computer Entertainment $119.9 million as a result of the conclusion of the patent infringement suit. In future periods, the company expects to record an additional $29.9 million as revenue and $2.3 million as interest income, related to the litigation. In total, Immersion believes that Immersion will receive a total of "at least" $152.2 million from Sony.

Sony at this time does not offer the vibration feature in its current PS3 controllers, but indicated that it may be working with Immersion to bring back the "rumble pack" in upcoming controllers.