Of all the patents that Sony has secured over the years, this latest may be its strangest especially with the PlayStation 5 coming out next year. According to LetsGoDigital, Sony has filed a patent for a PlayStation cartridge. Sony senior art director Yujin Morisawa is the design of the cartridge.
You can check out the cartridge’s design here. The obvious assumption is that Sony could be using this as a new media format for the PS5. It seems unlikely given that a 4K Blu-ray is already confirmed for the console. It’s also unlikely that this is the format for a new PlayStation device like a new handheld.
At this point, we can just assume that Sony is patenting this technology for something down the line, even if the infrastructure for that thing doesn’t exist. It sounds weird but the company has patented things like digital trade-ins and gifting, which still don’t exist on the PlayStation Store. We’ll have to wait and see how this latest invention pans out.
The PlayStation 5 is scheduled to release in the Holiday 2020 season.