After the democratization of the share button on current-generation consoles, does the future of gaming lie in an unexpected new button? In any case, Sony has taken care to file a revolutionary new concept before its competitors. The specialized site Tech4Gamers has managed to unearth a patent filed by the Japanese manufacturer, suggesting the development of a feature never before seen... On a controller at least. If we are to believe the details filed by Sony in the United States, the video game giant is considering implementing the ability to rewind a game as we please.
This type of mechanic has already proven itself in specific titles such as Braid or more recently Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, but has never yet been offered as an option for all games available on a platform. Such an addition could drastically change players' habits. Like “save-states“, these spontaneous saves offered by emulators or certain software like the Nintendo Switch Online retro library, players could therefore save and then load any stage of a title in progress, but not only that. Sony is looking further ahead and imagining new ways to improve everyday gaming comfort.
Cheating? Not really.
The patent description states that players would be able to jump back to key moments in their gameplay with the simple press of a button on the controller. The user would then have the choice of performing different actions to meet their immediate needs: “The user can enter rewind mode directly from the game using one or more presses of the controller and thus consult their recent gameplay (with the possibility of rewinding, fast-forwarding, rewinding, etc.) and then returning to the current gameplay at at any time.”
In titles that are intentionally like Souls-like, some might see this feature as cheating. However, Sony explains that this feature has other, much more interesting applications. Some video games require hundreds of hours of play to reach the end of the adventure (hello Persona, we're talking about you), so much so that it sometimes happens that essential elements of the storyline are forgotten. With the rewind option, Sony wants to implement a “&em>bookmark” system allowing to record a direct access to a specific part of the game. In this way, players could return to forgotten elements, or simply relive their favorite sequences out of pure nostalgia.
The patent even envisages an automation of bookmarks at key moments so that the player does not have to worry about it. Concretely, the objective would therefore be to offer total control over the progress of the game, for more comfort and replayability. It is important to keep in mind, however, that filing a patent is not a promise of development and that this concept may never see the light of day. The idea is nonetheless worthy of our attention and we can only hope that Sony and PlayStation will dig a little deeper into the issue in the future.
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