Recently, Sony has not been shying away from breaking away from the established norm when it comes to gaming. When it comes to their new console, while Xbox stayed with a similar controller design, PlayStation introduced the world to the… interesting looking DualSense controller. Other than that announcement, however, Sony has been keeping the future of PlayStation behind closed doors.
It seems that some of these visions of the future may be even stranger than a weird, two-tone controller. they recently filed for a patent on a gaming buddy robot to keep you company while you play, and though we should take the images with a grain of salt, as they are likely just a representation of a concept… this is definitely unexpected.
This companion will be a “feeling deduction unit,” meaning that it will be able to sense how you react to what is happening in your game, and in turn react to you. It is unclear what exactly it will do but, in theory, it could comfort you when you die or fail a mission and cheap you on when you beat a level.
The idea behind the concept is that most people prefer gaming with friends rather than alone and that this could extend beyond gaming and into consuming other media with this buddy. The filing states that the buddy could track your heart rate, or how much you are sweating in order to sense how you are feeling beyond just verbal reactions.
The patent covers the possibility of the buddy being either a physical, pet like robot or simply a virtual companion. It also covers the possibility of the buddy ‘controlling’ an AI player, or essentially interacting with you as if it is competing against or with you as a CPU player.
This patent likely won’t come to anything, but if it does it will be interesting to see how it actually comes into fruition. Will it be a glorified Clippy? Or will you have a full-on Her style relationship with it? Will it be able to move? To speak? Essentially there are more questions than answers with this very early concept, but it is an intriguing idea, and certainly something that breaches unexplored waters within the world of social gaming.