Like most other companies in the games industry, Sony frequently files patents for potential tech and technology-related ideas, from a controller that could emulate changes in temperature to players receiving real-time in-game assistance from “experts”, and the most recent patent filed by the company to be discovered might be of particular interest to many.
As spotted by The Loadout, Sony recently published a patent titled “Content streaming with gameplay launch”, which describes a method for players booting games and launching directly into specific in-game moments, activities, or missions, potentially through the implementation of cloud streaming.
“A system and method for launching gameplay from streaming content is provided,” the patent’s abstract reads. “Information regarding media content may be stormed in memory. Such media content may have at least one or more trigger points and each trigger point may be associated with a set of game data specific to a gameplay scene within an interactive title. The media content may be streamed to a user device over a communication network. A selection of one of the at least one or more trigger points may be received over the communication network from the user device. Identifying the set of game data associated with the selected trigger point may be identified and the interactive title for gameplay may be launched by the user device based on the identified set of game data associated with the selected trigger point.”
Of course, patents are often cases of companies simply protecting their ideas rather than having any immediate material plans, but while there are no guarantees that this will materialize as something, it’s certainly an intriguing idea. Currently, the PS5’s Game Help feature does sort of function along similar lines, but something as direct as what’s described in the patent would surely be of great use to many players, from Trophy hunters to those who’re simply looking to replay specific sections of a game.
