The PS Now streaming service isn’t necessarily as popular as PS Plus, but each and every month it provides players with a couple of stream-able games. Download-only games have appeared before, if rarely, but PS5 games have yet to appear on the service in any capacity. According to a new PS Now patent, Sony is actively working on making this a reality.

The ‘Ultra High-Speed Low-Latency Network Storage’ patent, recently published by Sony but filed back in April, details this work. The patent, seemingly discovered first by DualShockers, revolves around using multiple NVME drives networked together to faster find and stream games. There’s a lot of technical aspects to it, but essentially, it boils down to being able to find game data faster and stream it effectively.

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Of course, just because this patent exists doesn’t mean fans should expect PS5 games to appear on the PS Now service in the next batch. It could very well be into this year or the next before it is fully implemented, or it could be the very next major PS5 system update. A patent obviously doesn’t contain this sort of information.

playstation now logo

However, the patent does seem to be future-proofing PS Now, however. Many know the PS3 was complicated to work with on a game development side, which led to PS Now operating differently for PS3 and PS4 games on the backend. This patent looks to correct this, as it is designed to not only retrieve data block faster, but to pull various data blocks from multiple sources at once for faster processing. Theoretically, “the PS6” would be even faster than the PS5 and could utilize this same concept, if at a faster rate.

So, whereas PS3 and PS4 games on PS Now had to work differently, it seems that this new patent sets up a method that at least could work—in theory—for more than one generation. The PS6 is nowhere near actually existing, notably, but it means that certain elements PS Now is currently engaging with to ensure PS5 games can stream properly on the service won’t be as big of a deal as the current new gen.

While fans still probably have quite a wait on this PS Now update, it’s still nice to know that this is something Sony is actively working on. For now, fans can expect the PS Plus games to be announced on Wednesday, September 29, though they’ve currently leaked online as Hell Let Loose (PS5), Mortal Kombat X (PS4), and PGA Tour 2K21 (PS4).

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Source: Sony’s ‘Ultra High-Speed Low-Latency Network Storage’ Patent (via DualShockers)