As seen in a surfaced patent document, it seems like Sony has reinvented saving your game by just giving it another name.
The fact, that you can save your game is nothing new, but what if Sony just gives it another name and puts a new funky button on its controllers for it?
Ever had the thought that you would like to restart at a certain point in a game after losing to a difficult boss fight or getting damaged by a poorly placed bomb? Wouldn’t you wish for a way to restart a few moments before said event happened and have another try?
Well... sure, you could argue that just saving the game before and load the safe file would do the trick, but that’s not the Sony way.
PlayStation to patent... Saving?
Sony is trying to patent a new feature for future controllers that would allow players to rewind their progress at any point.
First spotted by Tech4Gamers, Sony applied for the patent of a new feature design back in 2023, even though the document is just being publicized now. It outlines plans for a “game play rewind” function with “user triggered bookmarks”.
Sony wants to add a new button to PlayStation controllers in the future, that let players rewind their game back to a certain point in their gameplay – so basically save and load a game. But there also would be moments when the system would automatically place said bookmarks – so basically autosave.
We don’t know how developers will react to the feature. Rewinding key decisions in games that are based on how players act at certain moments could ruin the experience fundamentally. When there’s always a way to go back that easily, no decision would really matter.
Still, Sony seems to be sure that such a feature would be useful, seeing the time and money they invested into this patent. On the other hand, there are a lot of patents in the gaming industry that never make it into production – so maybe they will realize that saving already exists and drop the whole idea.
What do you think about this patent? Would you use this feature?
