Sony has filed a patent for a system that would more effectively cancel out background noise picked up by a headset’s microphone. With a penchant for innovation and a long history of developing noise-canceling headphones and similar devices, this seems like a logical next step for the Japanese tech producer. Plus, with popular PlayStation 5 games such as Back 4 Blood and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2implementing proximity chat, enhanced noise-canceling can lessen the drawbacks of these features.
In the not-too-distant past, multiplayer lobbies were often populated by players with sub-par setups who allowed background noise to develop into a total cacophony. Yet, as microphone and headset tech has improved over the years, teammates with low-quality headsets seem to be less of an issue. Still, there’s certainly room for improvement, and unwanted background noise persists as a huge detriment to players who make use of proximity chat. Fortunately, Sony’s new patent could eliminate these issues altogether.
The specifics outlined in Sony’s newly-filed patent are fairly in-depth, but, in essence, the company plans to take advantage of higher-quality microphones to better parse audio that should and should not be transmitted in-game. Theoretically, this should stop unwanted background noise from polluting a pre-game lobby or giving away a player’s position in a proxy-chat-enabled game. Sony always seeks to innovate when it comes to headsets, and some PS5 early adopters may remember that the PS5 Pulse 3D Headset sold out almost immediately after the system launched. That said, it’s not clear how this new tech will be implemented in the future.
Perhaps Sony plans to unveil a new line of exclusive PS5 headsets with this advanced technology, or perhaps it will be a built-in feature of all Sony headphones in the future. Either way, the continued success of battle royale titles like Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and the ever-growing momentum of PvPvE experiences like Escape from Tarkov make voice chat improvements like these necessary.
However, it’s important to remember that Sony files seemingly industry-changing patents all the time, and relatively few seem to come to fruition. Filing a patent without an explicit plan to use it is a common industry practice, but, with this latest filing joining other more far-fetched plans like Sony’s system that would allow players to secretly communicate through haptic feedback, it can be tough to tell when and how these things could take effect.