Sony Patents Awarding Trophies via Emulation for Older Games

Sony has filed a new patent where PlayStation Trophies will be awarded for older games running on emulation software.

[Majin-vegeta]

Wasnt this patented during last gen?i remember it

[lodossrage]

It was, but sometimes patents has to be refiled

[RazzerRedux]

If it was this:

"Found by @Renka_Schedule on Twitter the patent was filed this year and shows what clearly looks like a PS1, PS2, and PS3 being emulated onto a separate screen via cloud gaming, which would presumably be PlayStation Now."
https://www.psu.com/news/so...

Then it is a bit different

[Majin-vegeta]

No it was specifically referring to trophies being added to past gen games

[IanTH]

I remember that too. It was back near the end of the PS3 era, though nothing really came of it. But I did some googlin' so others know we aren't crazy lol

https://www.ign.com/article...

[autobotdan]

Trophies for Playstation one games?

[IMissJimRyan]

Yes! Now I can buy the same PSOne games for the third time!

[luckytrouble]

Truly the gamer dream in action.

[autobotdan]

Support the Playstation brand

[badz149]

it's not the same though. there will be trophies now

/s

[Gaming4Life1981]

🤣🤣🤣
ca nt lie and say i wont buy any. I can think of 10 games i will buy off top.

[SpineSaw]

Ohhh they failed to mention the patent that forces a gamer to buy a old game for..... as you put it "the 3rd time".
Now one could or "you" could go game on Xbox and play their old games forrrrever cause they can't seem to release a decent First Party game that's worth buying. I guess that's why they have that rental service. But I guess that's a good thing for the parents of the Xbox kids. I tell ya what that Xbox Babysitter Rental service truly is the best value in gaming..... Mom's love it.

[Orchard]

Hopefully this means we might get proper PS1/2/3 emulation on PS5... but I also know 99% of patents filed don't evolve to be anything, so I won't hold my breath.

[Anungunrama]

Oddly timed though with the rumoured store closure upcoming. Hopefully it's a way to preserve their own game legacy.

[kayoss]

I would love to have emulation. But as i did more research i found that emulation is more difficult that meets the eyes in terms of the legality of it. Sony first party games emulations is not a problem because they own those IPs. however, when i comes down to 3rd party games, it seems that they may end up with some legal hurdles. They have to negotiate with original developers to see if they can have a game emulated for a new platform (unless its a physical disc). But again, it's just what i gather from talking to my friend who is a legal expert.

[Orchard]

@Anungunrama Yeah I dunno about the store. If the rumor is true, maybe they'd find a way to put PS1/2/3 games on the PS5 store? I haven't booted up my PS3 on forever, but I guess the PS3/Vita store must be pretty outdated by now compared to the PS4/5 store.

If they do implement back-compat though, they should make sure we can boot disks, I still have a LOT of PS1/2/3 games sitting around.

@kayoss There's definitely licensing requirements which is why not all XB360 games work on the new Xbox's, but the big ones do, so if MS has the lawyers and capabilities to negotiate/navigate that area I'm sure Sony can too. One would also assume that anything in PSNow today would be supported by back-compat without too many legal hurdles.

As for technical challenges. PS1/2 is easy on modern systems (Even the XSX/XSS can run PS1/2 games via dev mode). PS3 is a bit trickier, but is possible, and has been done on PC by RSPC3 team. I'd assume Sony can implement it better than they can since they have access to all the confidential information surrounding the PS3 hardware & SDK's. Sony clearly has the engineering capabilities to implement such things.

All in all, I remain in hope that we'll get to play our PS1/2/3 games some day on our PS5's. Lots of good games are being left behind if not.

[Teflon02]

kayoss yeahhh but psone games on ps3, psp and vita are emulated so it's nothing new to sony. It's likely they're doing whhat they did with GTA and whatever PS2 games last gen but probably going to continue with ps1 as well

[darthv72]

@orchard, being able to play PS3 discs should not be a problem, even playing majority of PS2 discs should be possible as well. The big "?" comes from the CD media games. I know there was some reason why the PS4 did not support CD media and the PS5 [I believe] uses the same drive.

Even if it doesnt actually "read" from the discs but instead just validates the security key and ToC on it in order to obtain an equivalent digital rendition. That would be great.

[Unknown_Gamer5794]

I hope so. If the legacy PS stores go away, I would love if it something came along to replace it. Plus, it would be nice to have that stuff on my PS5 instead of having to dust off the old PS3. PlayStation may not quite have the history Nintendo does, but there have still been a lot of great games from the PS1 onward, and it would be nice to be able to play them again. I don't care nearly as much about the trophies, but I suppose that would be neat too. It's the greater implication of just having access to those games again that interests me though.

Life goes on either way, and the majority of my gaming hours will be dedicated to modern games, but there are a lot of great older games that I hope aren't lost to time. Make this happen Sony!

[Timzster]

Here's hoping that emulation idea comes to pass. With the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita stores rumored to be closing, there needs to be a way we can play the older games and legacy console libraries. Adding trophies would be a bonus.

[isarai]

As much as i'd love that, patents like this have popped up from Sony a few times over the generations. So not really an indication of anything

[darthv72]

When I first heard the rumors of store access to those other PS systems being shut down, it made me think of what would they do with all of those digital assets. They wouldnt just shitcan them... so maybe this is the first step to even more platform support on the PS5? Playing PS1-3 and PSP/Vita on the PS5 would be epic bragging rights.

Because no matter how much effort MS puts into their BC program, it would never equate to one system running 7 different platforms of software.

[Skate-AK]

Hmmm, I thought they already did that and this is why there are PS2 classics with trophies?

[darthv72]

but now add in PS1 classics with trophies...... or even PSP classics with trophies.

[Mr Logic]

Those were new products. It required developer work.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Trophies for older games? Nice

[Gunstar75]

Slow news week?

[RazzerRedux]

Slow troll week?

[BioShockGX]

Pepsi man with trophies please

[Tedakin]

Supporting old games is silly when Xbox does it.

[andy85]

Not really, it's only silly when you try and make playing old games your system seller. This is just a nice added bonus for PS

[Kavorklestein]

Ever think the system sells itself?
I doesn't need 1st party games to sell and sell well.

Sure it might not sell as well as the PS5 but that's splitting hairs just to be able to talk crap.

The real thing to focus on is, the fact that having old games be well supported is cool. No matter if Sony or Xbox does it. If Sony does more to support their old legacy then that will be AWESOME. Period.
Any viewpoint where the thought of Sony=Good and Xbox=Bad for doing Classic/Legacy game support is nothing more than hypocrisy and double standards.

[andy85]

Not really. It sells because it has loyal Xbox players which is all well and good, but reward that loyalty with some new games not false promises. As it stands people were buying a brand new console to only play old games on. Nothing about that is right. I don't think Xbox are bad for supporting old games. But Sony do it but its a side bonus, my point was Xbox do it and the emphasis is on that for their new console.

[Hikoran]

This would he huge, it would give younger players much more incentive to go back on the older titles

[BattleCat]

I think, everybody hates Sony patent news.

[jambola]

thats why the comment are mostly positive.....

[Hawk198666]

This is ancient news

[Petebloodyonion]

I doubt that Sony will allow you to play your old games via emulator when they can sell them again on the Ps5 store.
I just think that Sony doesn't want to recode the game and basically have a Ps1 (or other) emulator that will recognize some code and allow the game to run on a Ps5.
That could also explain why Sony has been making it harder to get buy the legacy game on Ps3/PSP and Vita and could explain the future store shutdown.

[Aggesan]

Can you patent something that already exists? I've been using retroachievements.org for quite a while now.

[Mandingo2020]

Sony is a day late and a dollar short. Retroarch is catching up to PS3 emulation. By the time Sony gets this figured out you'll be able to emulate PS1 to PS3 on the retroarch. That backwards compatibility train left the station when they didn't release the PS5 with backwards compatibility. At this point Sony can go pound sand.

[Mandingo2020]

By the way you can install retroarch on your Xbox Series X/S and play the whole library of PS1 & PS2 games on it. Sound like the new Xbox has better backwards compatibility than the PS5 😂