Image: Sony
An instant Ctrl-Z undo is a popular gag in science fiction, and it has some obvious benefits for gamers, with beloved titles like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Braid built around the idea. But what if you could apply it to every game, at any time? Sony’s working on it, or at least it got a lawyer to patent the idea of a dedicated rewind button on a game controller.
Tech4Gamers spotted the United States patent filing in PatentScope. The patent was published by the USPTO on October 31, so it’s pretty darn fresh as these things go — Sony only applied for the patent about a year and a half ago. The dense legalese basically describes the action of pressing or holding said button (which is where the “share” button sits on the current PlayStation pad), then going immediately backwards, either in the gameplay itself or a recorded video.
Like I said, rewinding your actions in gameplay isn’t a new idea, but it’s an interesting thought to so thoroughly integrate it into gamepad hardware. That would mean that Sony has a specific game in mind that heavily uses this mechanic, or would want developers to start implementing it on a broad basis. The rewind feature Nintendo integrated into the Switch Online emulation platform might be a pretty heavy inspiration here, and the PlayStation 5’s reliance on speedy flash storage and beefy hardware could implement it for modern full-power games. These are systems that could also be applied to PC games, albeit with a little more legwork.
Personally I’d love to see them try it — access to a Sands of Time-style rewind mechanic might finally make all those Soulslikes accessible to a scrub like me. But it’s worth pointing out that it would be basically impossible to do in multiplayer (for the same reason Fallout‘s slo-mo VATS system doesn’t work in Fallout76), and getting developers onboard with any kind of console-exclusive feature is sometimes a crapshoot. When’s the last time you saw a game that actually used the PlayStation controller’s touchpad as a touchpad, and not just a giant button?
And with apologies for continuing to rain on this parade, I have to point out that a patent filing on its own is pretty darn whispy when trying to glean a corporation’s plans. Companies as big as Sony have entire departments that pump out patents on the off chance that something they come up will be useful in the future…or might earn them some money if someone else actually implements it.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.
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