In the current console generation, it’s become possible for most players to capture whatever’s happening on screen with the push of a button and upload it directly through the console. As such, it’s easier than ever for players to share the interesting moments and mishaps they experience with others. For years, the PlayStation 4 has been one of the top examples of capturing screenshots and videos, but a new Sony patent suggests that its successor, the PlayStation 5, will take it up a notch.
Filed with the US Patent & Trademark Office on November 21, as first spotted by RespawnFirst, the Sony patent in question is for a technology called “scene tagging.” What that is, according to the patent, is a means to “characterize user generated content associated with gameplay information associated with video games.” In other words, screenshots and video captured by players.
While that may sound more current-gen than next-gen, screenshot/video-capturing is just part of the system described in the patent. The actual “scene tagging” refers to the system’s ability to automatically recognize “substantive aspects” of a captured screenshot or video and generate metadata for it. These aspects could be anything from the in-game location that a screenshot captured to the characters and key objects that appeared in it.
By compiling all this information, it will therefore become possible for players to search through the metadata and seek out other players’ shared content based on specific keywords. As for practical applications, the patent suggests that the metadata can, among other things, help players get through the hard parts of a video game by viewing how other players get through those sections.
The implication here is that Sony could be planning on bringing a greater social aspect to the PS5’s sharing system than the PS4. The way the patent describes it, the process of organizing the metadata will be fine-tuned to the point where users can organize similar content (like, say, impressive plays in an online shooter) by certain genres and authors, and even skip to “specific portions of interest” within that content. What’s more, it suggests that players will even be able to directly recreate what they see in captured screenshots and videos within their own games, as the patent says users will be able to “download and execute related instructions for establishing the same environment and event(s) recorded in the user generated content.”
Scene tagging could definitely make for a next-gen gaming experience if any of this is to go by, but we probably don’t need to remind everyone to take this with a grain of salt, as a patent isn’t a guarantee that Sony is going to be implementing this system in anything. As with the other patents for potential PS5 features out there, it’s only a guarantee that Sony is considering the idea.
The PlayStation 5 launches holiday 2020.
Source: US Patent & Trademark Office via RespawnFirst
