PlayStation patents have been surfacing right and left the past few weeks. And right on schedule, another has popped up on the Internet, and it looks like it's for the PS5. According to this patent -- and assuming it's for PlayStation 5 -- the PS5 will put a considerable focus on user-generated content of sorts. More specifically, user-generated content within games. The new patent -- which was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office website yesterday -- was first spotted by Respawn First, and reveals Sony has been working on a new technology called Scene Taggging, which, more or less, is going to be used as a characterization system for user-generated content within any given game. The patent doesn't outright convey this technology is for PS5, but it's unclear what else it could be for.

A description of the technology within the patent reads as follows: "A method for implementing and using scene tagging, the method comprising: generating user content associated with a video game, the generated user content including a recording of an event that occurred within the video game being played on a user computing device; characterizing details about the recorded event, the details including a location that the recorded event occurred at within the video game; assigning metadata to the generated user content, wherein the assigned metadata is automatically generated and describes features of the recorded event of the generated user content; storing the generated user content and assigned metadata in a database; receiving a request from a user to view the generated user content stored in the database, the user request including terms that correspond to the assigned metadata; displaying the generated user content for the user to view on their user computing device, wherein displaying includes recreating the recorded event so that the user can participate within the same event on the user computing device."

What this all seems to suggest is that the PS5 will put a focus on user-generated content and sharing that content, which the PS4 also put a lot of focus on with the "Share" button and all that jazz. In other words, it's not very surprising to hear PlayStation is investing more in this space, especially considering that games-as-a-service titles with large communities are currently dominating the gaming landscape.

PlayStation 5 is set to release sometime holiday 2020. At the moment of publishing, no further salient information about the next-gen console has been revealed.

Posted: Nov 24, 2019 4:31 pm
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/11/22/ps5-playstation-5-feature-patent/