Sony has continued to trademark the phrase "Soho Engine" in more countries around the world. While it's pure speculation, the term "Soho" could be a hint as to the way this engine could be applied.

Trademarks and project names have been a popular way to peek ahead into the future, ever since the widespread adoption of the Internet made them easy to find. Of course, some predictions have been completely off-the-mark, such as rumors of a GameCube Classic Edition in 2018. However, some guesses have ended up being accurate. such as trademark-based speculation that Square Enix would localize Collection of Mana in 2019. Still, trademarks for pre-existing properties are easier to interpret than all-new project names. Few people could learn much about the Wii U, for example, from its pre-release name, Project Cafe.

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Sony first trademark Soho Engine in 2020 in Europe, and has now extended that trademark to Switzerland and New Zealand, according to Gematsu. Although this timing loosely coincides with the release of the PlayStation 5, the term never appeared in relation to any of Sony's marketing for the console. This means that the Soho Engine could be key for an as-yet-unannounced game, or it could have something to do with Sony's plans for upcoming PlayStation 5 peripherals.

The most obvious hint is that SoHo is a real-life neighborhood in New York City. As far as popular PlayStation-exclusive games set in New York go, the Spider-Man series immediately comes to mind. It's possible that the heavily-teased Spider-Man 2 will use a proprietary engine known as Soho Engine. The series is no stranger to serving as a tech demo for Sony, after all; Spider-Man: Miles Morales let PS5 owners enjoy impressive 4K resolutions or a 60 frame-per-second framerate, depending on their preference.

Another project in the works at Sony is its upcoming PSVR system for PS5. While Sony has revealed new controllers for the system, it hasn't revealed any games yet. Perhaps the Soho Engine is designed to facilitate high-quality VR experiences, developed exclusively for the PS5. As it stands, Unity and Unreal Engine are the most popular engines for VR development; if Sony were to introduce an easy-to-use VR game engine that slowly became the industry's de facto standard, it could give Sony a large amount of exceptionally good VR content.

Of course, Sony could actually be in the process of creating a game called Soho Engine. While this would be out-of-left-field, there are a decent number of games and movies with the word "engine" in their titles, Mortal Engines being one of the most recent. If this actually is a game title, fans will just have to wait and see what it is. Still, in the meantime, it's fun to speculate about what Sony has in the works.

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