It appears that PlayStation’s parent company Sony are working on some interesting new features. Many of these are aimed at helping players with specific needs in looking at how they can further their enjoyment of the gameplay. Sony has filed several patents over the years and the most recent is perhaps one that looks at more inclusivity for players who perhaps struggle to follow storylines.
There are no doubt players in the community who have difficulty with memory recall or have been diagnosed with ADHD and perhaps have difficulty keeping focused on storylines when progressing through a game. With this new patent, Sony is hopeful that it will provide a support system for these players to increase their understanding of the ongoing storyline and thus further the experience of the game.
What do we know about the Sony PlayStation summary system?
The system in question would see players able to recall specific game sections via trigger points and help them keep track of the progress of the gameplay. PlayStation games tend to be heavily narrative-driven and there are perhaps times when players shy away from these due to struggling to follow what is going on/or what has happened previously.
With this new system in place, there could be more appeal to players who perhaps feel intimidated by these games, making the experience more accessible. Further concepts are also being worked on by Sony, one of which is an AI coach which would see inexperienced players gaining assistance with some of the more difficult in-game concepts.
Another concept is game difficulty auto-adjusting to a player’s skill level without the need to change this through the menu option. We’re sure many players would have loved having this feature in Bloodborne. However, what’s clear is that Sony is working hard on their inclusivity and highlighting the needs of players to ensure that they are getting the most from their gaming experience.
Haven’t we seen this before with PlayStation games?
Whilst this patent does sound like an interesting new feature, it is not unheard of and has been seen in other games previously. There are several games that utilize a recap feature and 2023’s Final Fantasy 16 brought in a feature called Active Time Lore. This allows players to pause a cutscene and bring up a log of all the characters and events relating to that scene as a refresher.
What Sony is proposing with this sounds very similar to what was seen in FF16 and we could no doubt see some variation on a pop-up window to which players can access parts of the game that may have been forgotten. Whilst we doubt many players will struggle with the recall of campaigns in games like Call of Duty, other more narrative-driven series like God of War or Marvel’s Spider-Man may see many gamers benefitting.
The recently filed Sony patent could be an amazing new concept to aid PlayStation players who may struggle with memory issues or have ADHD. Having this Summary system in place could help with specific storyline recall and trigger points could be seen as beneficial to players who have struggled to follow the storyline. However, we should point out that many patents don’t make it past the concept stage and it remains to be seen whether this will indeed make it to completion.
Follow us for more entertainment coverage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
