Sony has submitted another potentially crucial patent listing, this time referencing a curious new way of handling gameplay recordings with save state functionality. Save states are a crucial element of modern console emulation software because they allow players to quickly store the entirety of the device's memory status to disk. The saved file contains everything needed for the player to resume playing from that point onwards whenever they wish to do so.

The reason why Sony might wish to leverage save states for gameplay capture purposes might have something to do with how flexible they are. This type of fast saving allows players to rapidly and seamlessly jump from one point in the game to another. Notably, save states usually exist as an extra option that doesn't interact with the games' onboard save functionality, making the feature particularly interesting for some use cases.

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Sony's new patent listing describes a feature where the system stitches together disparate recorded gameplay sections into a single video file without any breaks in gameplay. According to the patent description, the feature would allow the player to pick and choose from a variety of different gameplay recordings they had made. Particularly noteworthy is the listing's mention of users being able to set pre-determined criteria by which the feature would automatically replace some or all of an existing "save state" video it had previously recorded. The whole setup sounds potentially computationally expensive, suggesting that it might make use of Sony's previous multi-GPU patent in some capacity.

Sony-PlayStation-Save-State-Video-Diagram

While the patent listing doesn't directly reference speed-running in any capacity, it's not a big stretch to imagine that this feature could have massive consequences for this particular community of gamers. Whereas Sony's frame rate compensation submission has substantially broader appeal and usefulness, a seamless "save state" video storage functionality would likely be less useful to the average gamer, but prove absolutely crucial for speed-runners who could now stitch together the best parts of several runs into one continuous video showcase.

Of course, there's no telling if and when this feature might see the light of day. Sony has been having a bit of a field day with various inventive patent submissions as of late, such as the PlayStation Helper Mode functionality that had been described earlier this year. The sheer number of these submissions suggests that Sony is looking to cover as many potential future feature sets as possible, and there's no way to know which might end up getting prioritized at this time.

In the shorter term, there have been rumors of PlayStation Showcase cancellation for 2022, which may disappoint dedicated PlayStation fans. There's still time for Sony to flip the script, of course, but even if the Showcase does take place, it is exceedingly unlikely that any of the company's fascinating patent submissions would end up getting featured this year.

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