Yesterday, Sony finally confirmed the news that gamers have been waiting for – the PlayStation 5 will launch by Christmas 2020.
While details on the console remain sparse, a recent patent indicates that the PlayStation 5 could feature a voice assistant, similar to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.
The patent, spotted by Voicebot.AI , details a system called PlayStation Assist that players can interact with mid-game.
The patent explained: “The player may want to gain more information about some aspect of the gaming application, such as character information, strategy information, overall popularity of the gaming application, scheduling a time to play with friends in a multi-player format through a cloud gaming service, gaining information about social network friends who are playing the same gaming application or another gaming application, obtaining information about how to overcome some obstacle preventing the player from advancing in the gaming application, etc.”
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Overall, Sony hopes the system will help players to have a more ‘immersive’ gaming experience.
The patent adds: “Rather than just playing the gaming application out-of-the-box, so to speak, the player can enhance his or her game play with information that is presented simultaneously with the game play, and/or a running conversation with an automated gaming assistant during the game play that is configured to provide psychological and informational support to the player.”
As with most patents, it remains unclear whether or not Sony plans to include the technology in the PlayStation 5, in a later console, or won’t use it at all.
Thankfully, there’s not long to wait to see the PlayStation 5 for ourselves – the console will finally be revealed at the end of next year.