In recent months, Sony has submitted patents for a number of innovations for the PlayStation 5 and the company’s service offerings in general. Some of these patents are for relatively minor additions to the PlayStation experience, while others could change the face of gaming in more profound ways.
For example, a fun and lighthearted patent involves reading players’ real-life facial expressions with a camera located in the controller and then converting the expression into an emoji that can be sent to other people. Another Sony patent submitted in June would allow those using PlayStation VR to observe games from the viewpoint of other players and also release them from the tether, so to speak, to explore the game world on their own.
Several of Sony's more recent patents involve esports, and it seems that the company is interested in becoming more involved in this very popular aspect of video game culture. On July 8, Sony submitted a continuation of a patent originally filed in 2018. The patent is titled “Online Tournament Integration” and would make it easier for players, developers, and third-party organizers to quickly create a gaming tournament, whether it be a large-scale esports competition or a smaller event among friends.
This addendum to the previously filed patent comes less than a month before the Evolution Championship Series, commonly referred to as EVO, which Sony acquired in March, although it's unlikely that anything will come of this patent in time for that particular event.
The framework of the proposed online tournament integration system would be a “gaming network platform” on which players would need to have an account to register for esports events. A variety of games would be integrated into the platform, ranging from 1v1 titles, team-based games, or any game that gives people “the ability to compete against other players” and therefore “lends itself to tournament-style play.”
With the proposed system, one player would be designated the organizer of the tournament who could then send out invitations to other players. The system would provide tools for team management, event tracking, specifying tournament parameters, social tools, instant messaging, and browsing live and archived streams of esports events. Additionally, spectators of an event who become interested in following a particular competitor could be linked to information about other tournaments in which that player participated.
According to Sony's patent filing, gaming tournaments are most successful when the skills of participants are at a similar level, so the online tournament integration system would allow organizers to require specific qualifications in order to participate. This could be carried out by having practice rounds that keep track of the player’s metrics, or by evaluating a player’s wins versus losses, total amount of time spent playing a particular game, the number of kills or points acquired, and so on.
Source: IGN