Games @sh.itjust.works Nemeski @lemm.ee 23h ago

Sony is trying to patent a 'universal' rewind button that could fix your worst gaming catastrophes

www.pcgamer.com Sony is trying to patent a 'universal' rewind button that could fix your worst gaming catastrophes

Could be coming to a future console, but will it actually work with all games?

27 comments

They invented a quick save button?
- This is designed to work with all games so it's more similar to how many emulators implement quick save than how it works in most games. I suspect or rather hope that it's as fast (instantaneous) as it is in emulators.
  
  It also appears that it's supposed to rewind like you can do in some racing games.
  
  It's more complicated than a simple quick save button found in mostly older games. It's a neat feature but I would obviously prefer that they didn't get the patent so Xbox also could implement something similar.
- Yes but this time, it has quick load too!
Sounds like something only a small number of devs would implement. Unless they are confident they can fuck with the memory space of all games without issues. I expect a PS5 game is a bit more complicated than a saved state on an SNES.

Right?
- We're already capable of snapshotting memory state, I suppose this is just the next step of that. Maybe writing to a memory buffer etc
This needs to be killed as we have prior art (Emulators, Braid, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, heaps of racing games, etc).

If their only significant addition is "we a have a button for it" then we need to ask if a button qualifies as "inventive" in 2024?

Edit:

Announcer: Will he succumb to the maddening urge to eradicate history? At the MERE PUSH of a SINGLE BUTTON! The beeyootiful shiny button! The jolly candy-like button! Will he hold out, folks? CAN he hold out?

- Space Madness (1991)
- All patents need to be killed. They only benefit the rich and powerful.
- On all those games my keyboard has a button for it.
This breaks many games
- Breaks trophies too, unless Sony disables them when it's used.
  
  In emulation if you are using retroachievements rewinding / save stating gives you a 'lesser' achievement so the precedent is there from the groups that already invented such a thing
- Imagine just rewinding in Elden Ring? No more consequence for death, just un-lose your souls and dodge better without actually learning the tells.
  
  What would be the point?
  
  Let them ruin their own experience? Or it’ll make Elden Ring much more accessible to casual players.
Sony patents random stuff just in case all the time. It doesn't mean it's ever going into a an actual product.
- Is a crappy situation but patents don't enable the patent holder to make a product, after all you can make the product without claiming a patent. Instead they stop people who are not the patent holder from making that product.
  
  So if we put on our tinfoil hats its likely that some "just in case" patents are really just stopping their competition from heading in that direction.
  
  Their lack of a patent for controller vibration prevented Sony from having vibration on Sixaxis - notice that despite all the BS that it interfered with motion sensing, Dualshock 3 came out just a few months after Sony managed to settle the suite with Immersion.
  
  Since there's no penalty for making a patent and not using it, it's probably cheaper for Sony to pre-emptively register everything that comes from brainstorming sessions.
Pretty sure that’s already been done in Viewfinder

27 comments