One of Sony's greatest innovations with PlayStation 4 is the Share button, allowing players to quickly grab screenshots or video clips from games they're currently playing and post them for all to see. Yet another patent, dug up by RespawnFirst, suggests sharing this type of content isn't going anywhere on PS5. Not only that, but it sounds like it could be significantly built upon.
The patent application is for something called Scene Tagging, and it seems this could make user-generated videos and images much more interesting. The description of this technology is pretty wordy, but we'll do our best to condense it down.
Scene Tagging will make it so that each gameplay clip shared by PS5 users will generate metadata, which will house information such as what game it's from, where in the game it takes place, what items and characters are present, etc. The purpose of this is that other PS5 players will be able to search for a certain part in a game and then select a relevant clip. Perhaps most interestingly is that viewing said footage "includes recreating the recorded event so that the user can participate within the same event on the user computing device". In a nutshell, this sounds to us like you'll be able to search for a part in a game you want help with, and shared footage from other players will be able to reproduce the scene in your game.
This sounds kind of mad, but could potentially tie into another patent we've been hearing about. It's possible the PS5 will come with an onboard AI helper called PlayStation Assist. Could it be that Sony will let us all help each other out by using the Share button, and making those gameplay clips searchable and interactive with an AI assistant?
It's important to remember that, as this is just a patent, it might not be included in the final machine. However, if Scene Tagging is implemented into PS5, it could give the Share button far more importance. If you're curious, check out the patent for yourself through the link. What do you think of all this? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
[source gamesradar.com, via respawnfirst.com, appft1.uspto.gov]
Comments 12
Could be interesting, given my own recent experience in Sniper Ghost Warrior 3.
There's a trophy for killing 3 enemies with one bullet, and I was struggling to find an area where there were 3 enemies in a nice straight line to do it. I looked up a guide on YouTube, and while I knew the area, there are many mobile enemies and the person who made the guide had already killed a few prior to the stage they recorded it, and it was difficult to tell which he'd left to bag the trophy.
Something like this might have helped in that situation, to recreate the scene and make it clearer.
Sounds like a nice idea. As they say, the proof of the pudding... etc.
It's a cool feature, it will be really great if I can quickly search for walkthrough/faq when I'm playing the game rather than searching video walkthrough/faq from another screen (phone/tablet/pc).
Searching for the gow odin crow will be way more convenient 😃
Ninja Gaiden 2 on the Xbox 360 did something like this back in 2008. The game would 'record' your movements and button inputs onto a tiny file that was only a few kb in size. You could then download the file from the leaderboards and it would use your game to render it as a video. Ikaruga on 360 also did it. It'll be interesting to see what a more modern version of this is capable of doing, sounds really useful.
I have never, not once, intentionally pushed the share button on the ds4.
@wiiware - Why not use the ps4 browser? You can load up a youtube video guide and just double tap the PS button to instantly switch between the game and the video.
@Shigurui Ps4 browser is slow, and trying to forward or reserve video is too cumbersome with gamepad, not to mention I don't like putting word in youtube search bar using gamepad, I can do that way faster on my ipad.
That does sound neat. Although, I think I've only hit the current share button by accident.
Hopefully this will make it easier to share content for those of us that don't use social media.
i'm more interested in the AI than the share features honestly, i'm curious as to what it can do.
@Paranoimia Another solution is to ignore the useless trophies.
I just enjoy the games as they are , not bogged down wit useless trophies that designed to suck the fun out the game.
Plus they artificially inflate the game play length.
@Kawaiipikachu I agree. I ignore many trophies myself, as one look at my trophy list will tell you. But if I enjoy a game, I try to get as many as I can.
I don't get bogged down with them, though. I look at the list to get a rough idea of what's there, then I just play the game as I would without them; I might try for some of the simpler ones as I do. Then, if I enjoy the game enough, I'll do another play-through after I've finished to get the rest. If I can't, no big deal.
If you enjoy a game, anything which can prolong the experience and/or maybe get you to try something you wouldn't otherwise have tried is welcome in my book.
@huyi
Sony itself describes the feature as "a method for gaming assistance".
"For example, when a player gets stuck on a part of a gaming application, the player can request help through a query to a back-end game assist server," says the science bit of the patent application. "The query may be of any format, or a combination of formats, including audio, text, video, etc. The game assist server is configured to match the query to modelled responses based on a current game context from which the query was presented."
The patent explains the matching will be performed by "deep learning engine", managed by the game assist server or by a third party AI, so the "gaming experience of the player is improved".
"The player may want to gain more information about some aspect of the gaming application, such as character information, strategy information, overall popularity of the gaming application, scheduling a time to play with friends in a multi-player format through a cloud gaming service, gaining information about social network friends who are playing the same gaming application or another gaming application (e.g., discover what gaming application a friend is playing, obtaining information about that gaming application, obtaining purchasing information about that gaming application, etc.), obtaining information about how to overcome some obstacle preventing the player from advancing in the gaming application, etc.," adds Sony (via that very long sentence).
"As a result, the player has a more immersive experience with the gaming application, such that rather than just playing the gaming application out-of-the-box, so to speak, the player can enhance his or her game play with information that is presented (e.g., audio, text, video, etc.) simultaneously with the game play, and/or a running conversation with an automated gaming assistant (e.g., gaming butler/navigator) during the game play that is configured to provide psychological and informational support to the player."
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-09-29-new-patent-shows-playstation-assist-is-sonys-answer-to-alexa-and-cortana
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