Sony Latest Patent Suggests A Future Where You Can Rewind Any Game You’re Playing At The Push Of A Button

Every tech company worth its salt is good at filing for patents and not doing anything with them, and Sony is no slouch in that regard. We’ve seen some wild patents from the PlayStation company in the past, and its latest patent is no different when you consider the impact it could have, were it to actually be made.Spotted by Tech4Gamers, this patent invented by Mark Cerny and Dustin Clingman suggest a future PlayStation controller that has a universal rewind button, which would allow the player to ‘rewind’ any game they’re playing.If you’ve played any re-releases of retro games lately, than you’ve probably already experienced this function in a game. What’s different about this patent is that it describes a controller with a designated rewind button, that would be able to work on any game – seemingly without the game being built to support such a function.“A method including receiving actuation of a universal button on a controller during live game play of a video game, wherein image frames of the live game play are displayed in sequential order, wherein a current image frame is being displayed when the universal button is actuated. The method including receiving selection of a rewind mode from features presented in a user interface displayed simultaneous with the live game play in response to the actuation of the universal button,” reads the patent’s abstract.“The method including accessing from storage a subset of captured image frames generated for the game play. The method including entering the rewind mode by automatically switching from displaying the live game play to displaying the subset of captured image frames in reverse beginning from the current image frame. The method including responding to rewind controller inputs for controlling the displaying of the subset of captured image frames in rewind mode.”At first, this patent becoming reality might seem enticing. Being able to go back and double-check what an NPC said as part of its dialogue to see if there was a hint for a quest you’re doing, or giving a boss fight another try without starting from scratch, both seem like things that would make playing games more enjoyable.A universal rewind button might do that – but it’ll almost certainly break games from the developers intended vision and experience. When a retro game gets a rewind function, the game is being broken when players use it. Sure, it makes your experience less frustrating, but would really be healthy, for all games, if failure and frustration for players was totally removed?Would Hades, for example, be made better with a rewind button? Or Dead Cells? Or Dark Souls? Each of these games folds failure and frustration into the gameplay loop, encouraging players to do something different than what they tried before.And if the rise in popularity of FromSoftware titles has proven anything, it’s that people actually really love overcoming a challenge, even if they felt some frustration along the way.Of course this is all speculation, since this is just a patent and not a commitment from Sony to make this. But there’s no denying that a universal rewind button that truly works for every game would have a huge impact on the industry, and on how people play games.Source – [Tech4Gamers]



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