It’s hardly a secret that Sony has been on a patenting spree as of late, as the company is attempting to make a bunch of key innovations in the context of gaming. While some of them relate to ways of tackling player griefing and protection systems, others attempt to come up with ways to make games themselves more intuitive to play.
One of Sony’s latest patents, specifically, deals with “frictionless new device feature on-boarding,” and it seems like it might be an evolution of the kind of tutorials most gamers are already familiar with. The patent seems to imply a more interactive twist than usual, with the implication being that players could dictate how in-depth the system will go during the learning process.
Posted almost simultaneously with the patent for protecting players’ personal details during online gaming, Sony’s tutorial patent is all about making gameplay systems and device features more accessible and intuitive for the average player to pick up and use. The provided example specifies the detection of a new device during gameplay, which the patented system would then identify and follow up with a few unique options that the player could choose from, depending on how detailed of a tutorial they might be looking for.
The goal of the patented system would be to deploy an interactive learning scenario for the player to try out, and - ideally - this option would only appear in an interactive context where it makes sense for it to appear. The bow and arrow tutorial wouldn’t be provided until the player actually picks up a bow and arrow in a game, for example, and there are references to providing more or less granular training scenarios depending on the given situation. It could also work in tandem with Sony’s patent for tracking how players interact with in-game items, allowing Sony to improve both systems by making them interact with one another.
Since PlayStation’s CEO believes live-service games are key for future growth, the development of a unified library of organic and easily accessible tutorials would make perfect sense. Doubly so if the company aims to come up with a new codified interface to drive all of its live-service titles’ tutorials whenever they are needed. As the patent references “Training Session” instances that appear on-screen when the hardware is used in a new way, this may be what Sony is going for.
It may be worth remembering that there are plans to launch 10 Sony live-service games by 2026, and it’d make perfect sense for the company to think of them as individual aspects of a universal gaming platform. Sharing an interactive tutorial system among them could be the way to go, though there’s no telling if this is the actual plan, or if Sony might have something different in mind in the long run.
