New Sony Patent Will Let You Replay A Game From Any Point Possible

Haru@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 111 points –
New Sony Patent Will Let You Replay A Game From Any Point Possible - Insider Gaming
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Many emulators have been doing something like this for quite a while. Its called a "saved state." In some cases, a saved state can introduce bugs into the game play and mess up your progression, but that is just in emulation.

Hell, Nintendo has this on their Switch online emulator. Are they going to have to remove that from NSO because Sony patented it?

Nintendo did it on the wii

They did, but that isn’t really relevant to the discussion. The Wii Virtual Console is discontinued and technically doesn’t have live support from Nintendo like the Switch and NSO currently. If Sony somehow did get a patent for save states in games, I don’t think it would retroactively apply to the Wii.

And? Sony has patented their way of doing it, big deal if it’s been done elsewhere. It isn’t something PlayStation games can do easily so they’re building a solution.

This article isn’t saying this is some groundbreaking discovery of technology or something, nor is it a press release/announcement.

The points you make are the exact reason why people are looking at this patent in a funny way.

What they are describing in the patent is basically a save game or checkpoints for subchapters in a game. This is not innovative or new and that is the problem. You can't patent something that can already be considered public domain or common practice.

It's very much a big deal if this has been done somewhere else. The patent is obscure enough to look unique but it common enough to start years long legal battles.

On reading the patent, it is specifically referencing streamed game checkpoints. That is, believe it or not, very different than save games stored locally. Still, I find it hard to believe that NVidia, Google or Nintendo wouldn't have a patent for that already. If not, it may still be considered common use.

The devil is in the details for this issue. Is it really a new thing or is it "reverse" patent trolling?

This is a big deal as it could be that Sony is attempting patent trolling on the save game feature.