A new patent filed by Sony Interactive Entertainment has surfaced and is making the rounds for its implications involving the PS5 and what might be added to it in a future update. The patent comes the way of the United States Patent & Trademark Office, and while it was filed back in September, it wasn’t published until January 7. Like most patents, this new one boasts a boring name, “Placement of User Information in a Game Space, however, while the patent’s title is a snoozer, the details inside are actually quite interesting.
While the patent is full of technical jargon, its abstract boils down the new technology Sony has been working on, and now has patented. According to the official abstract of the patent, the technology allows players to communicate through filtered messages both in text, image, and audio form to other game players. With this, players could leave notes and messages for other players in specific places or during specific events. If any of this sounds familiar it’s because it sounds like Sony just copied Death Stranding.
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“The generation, association, and display of in-game tags are disclosed. Such tags introduce an additional dimension of community participation to both single and multiplayer games. Through such tags, players are empowered to communicate through filtered text messages and images as well as audio clips that other game players, including top-rated players, have generated and placed at particular coordinates and/or in context of particular events within the game space. The presently described in-game tags and associated user-generated content further allow for label based searches with respect to gameplay.”
Right now, it’s hard to imagine how this technology would be implemented. As is, it sounds like a nightmare to manage and filter, however, as you can see, it works with both single and multiplayer games, though you presumably would need an internet connection to access it.
For now, take all of this with a grain of salt. While the patent is legit, there’s no saying if we will ever see this technology in the PS5 or any PlayStation console. Companies like Sony file patents all the time, many of which never evolve past the conceptual stage.
At the moment of publishing, Sony has not commented on this newly-surfaced patent. In the past, when patents have surfaced, Sony has declined to comment. If for some reason it breaks this pattern and does comment on the patent and speculation it has created, we will be sure to update the story. In the meantime, for more coverage on the new PlayStation console, click here.
H/T, Scrub Wiki.
