New PlayStation Patent Could Provide PS5's Killer Feature

Sony has already shown off the impressive loading times of the PlayStation 5 made possible by its solid state drive (SSD) and said that loading times will be upwards of 19x faster than loading times on PS4. That said, a new patent suggests this may just be the beginning for the system. Recently, Sony Interactive Entertainment filed a continuation patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office that suggests Sony is aiming to eliminate loading screens all together. Now, it's unclear if this type of patent would come into effect in time for the PS5 at launch or even during its generation. But maybe we'll see an elimination of loading screens for the PS5 Pro or PS6?

How the technology works is by splitting environments into different segments that load independently and thus load more smoothly. If it works, there would be seamless transition across the game, which would be big for open-world games especially, which tend to suffer from loading screens and pauses.

"A system and method are disclosed for dynamically loading game software for smooth game play," reads the patent "A load boundary associated with a game environment is identified. A position of a character in the game environment is then monitored. Instructions corresponding to a next game environment are loaded into a memory when the character crosses the load boundary, such that game play is not interrupted."

Again, the PS5 is almost virtually removing loading times, which have plagued games this generation. Or at least that's the pitch Sony is making. But it looks like even more improvement in this area is being worked on. Games have already started to achieve this in some shape or form in this generation, but it hasn't been perfectly done yet. Further, a lot of loading times have been offset to the initial boot up, which isn't ideal either.

Looking at the patent, Sony has been working on this for a long time, which suggests it's very important to it. In other words, expect more progress to loading times over the next generation.

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Thanks, Inverse.