General Gaming News

Sony patents new cartridge-based device

Sony submits patent for a new PS5 cartridge

Sony Interactive Entertainment may be working on an entirely new project, and it’s not what anyone would expect in 2019. The company has filed a new design patent for a cartridge device, but details are still scarce, so who knows what it is.

The cartridge itself looks pretty plain, but it will no doubt differ from the cartridges retro gaming fans know and love. The device was registered at Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial (INPI) in Brazil, hinting that it may be some kind of regional product that Sony is developing. The filing could also be an attempt by Sony to stall incoming competition in the region who they may think are about to release a similar device.

So What Does It Do?

The designer behind the cartridge is listed as Yujin Morisawa, senior art director at the Corporate Design Center of Sony Interactive Entertainment. This the body within Sony that helps develop and test new ideas. The products this division designs aren’t always marketable, and could just be a simple proof-of-concept. So it is very important to temper any expectations about a new storage system or game distribution idea from Sony, as nothing could come of this patent.

Some people are busy speculating that there’s a possibility that this new device is somehow tied to the PS5. It sounds compelling at first glance, as the PS5 patents where first uncovered through the snooping of this same development and patent pipeline which this new cartridge device is in. But it seems like a shaky connection, after all, we already know the storage medium that console will use. After the PS5 development kit leaked a few weeks back, everyone has been bust trying to figure out how the new console works. We know it’s due to launch in 2020 and that it will have a disc drive, so it likely won’t pair directly with the new cartridge or another device.

READ MORE  Roblox making its way to PlayStation 5

The exponentially more powerful console will be a major upgrade over the PS4, with the ability to handle a much larger volume of data. This could lead to the development of new distribution media for game bundles much further down the road. But for now, Sony will be using split-disc methods to break up installations and gameplay on the next generation of games.

There is some precedent for this kind of thing by Sony, and it has almost nothing to do with gaming, the PS5 or anything like that. The Sony Toio, a children’s toy, was released in 2018 after a similar patent for the product was filed the year before. It’s still hard to say whether this new device is anything like that, but at least we have some idea what Sony could do with the technology in the modern era.

Maybe since Sony is branching into new areas of TV and films, they could be working on a new distribution device. What do you think this is? Let us know in the comments down below.

Source Wccftech as spotted by Dutch website LetsGoDigital.

The products below are affiliate links, we get a commission for any purchases made. If you want to help support ISKMogul at no additional cost, we really appreciate it.
10976 posts

About author
ISKMogul is a growing video game publication that got its start covering EVE Online, and has since expanded to cover a large number of topics and niches within the purview of gaming.
Articles