Sony Patents Quicksaving: What’s All the Hullabaloo About

For many gaming enthusiasts, the quicksaving feature on Sony’s renowned video games has been a subject of enduring curiosity. While games like Until Dawn and Detroit: Become Human integrated this feature in the past, it remains largely missing from most Sony titles. The recent surge of interest stems from Sony’s patent filing for “Quicksaving,” sparking diverse reactions within the gaming community—eliciting excitement from some and apprehension from others. In this article, we unravel this controversy and reveal the actual truth about the matter. Read on!

Setting the Stage for the Controversy and Public Reaction

The rumor stemmed from a news story by a relatively obscure gaming website, Exputer, last month. It reported that Sony had filed a new patent to enable users to play from any part of a game’s campaign. The article stated, “Sony has published a new patent that wants to let users play from any part of the campaign of a game’s campaign.”

Without conducting a thorough investigation, Insider Gaming picked up the story, lending it additional credibility by asserting, “the new Sony patent will let you replay a game from any point possible.” From there on, the news gained rapid traction, spreading like wildfire across various gaming and social media forums and plunging the entire gaming community into a state of frenzy. Some were shocked Sony would try to patent something so basic, while others mocked the digital entertainment company for being late to the party. 

But when we dug a bit deeper into the “Quicksaving” patent, it revealed a totally different story. 

Not What It Seems

The so-called Quicksaving patent is not truly a patent. Rather, it is a recent Sony patent application. This application is part of an existing family of patent applications, with its roots traced back to November 2019. What’s interesting is that this latest application marks the third installment in the series of US applications related to this patent family. Anyone with a bit of knowledge of patents knows that continuing applications like the one in the spotlight do not contain any new material unless they represent a form of continuation from prior filings. In the case of this new patent application, it doesn’t even qualify as such because it lacks any substantial novelty or innovation.

Diving Deeper

A detailed examination of the patent application reveals that it is actually about sharing “save states.”  Think of it like Chapter Selection in Half Life 2 – but a little more specific than that. Sony wants to secure a patent for functionality allowing gamers to seamlessly join a game at the point where a streamer is actively engaged. This is done by furnishing the stream viewer with autosaves they can readily load. It’s more about interactive gaming by sharing other people’s saves and gameplay than autosaving your gameplay.

In essence, the patent envisions a system wherein players can generate numerous save states during their gameplay session. Once a gaming session concludes, users can share their replay. After that, viewers can watch this replay and selectively choose specific points to commence playing, drawing parallels to the Replay feature commonly observed in real-time strategy (RTS) games.

This is a feature that web-based games could take advantage of, as rarely any of them use it. iGaming segment is one that first comes to mind, where they have plenty of games in their portfolio, but we’ve yet to see any save state in them. Of course, you’re not expected to have that option within a live-dealing Blackjack game, but providers like Rooli Online Casino could certainly benefit their players with this option on games like Gonzo’s Quest.

Extracting Key Elements

A video game usually has multiple trigger points or moments from which a player can start playing. In the patent application, Sony envisions such trigger points should be provided by the platform publisher or a third-party publisher. These trigger points would hold preset game data based on user/platform gameplay and act as the start of an “activity” (like a big boss fight or a level-up). Players would then be able to select a particular trigger point and continue the play from that point on. 

In the patent, Sony mentions that the Replay mechanism will allow users to “selectively play portions of a title” and offer a “unique user experience for the consumption of media content with interactive gameplay.” Rather than playing the entire game again, players could dive in and out of particular segments to make different gameplay choices or just experience the “movie cuts.” 

Potential Implications 

The feature in this patent, if it gets approved, will facilitate interactive video streaming. Users will be able to stream their own or their favorite streamer’s media content and then jump right into the gameplay using their specific trigger points. This feature will eliminate the need to open separate video gaming and streaming sessions. With that, we should probably get ready to expect a lot of “Can you play [X game] better than your favorite streamer?” videos once this sees the light of day.