[h=1]Sony Patent May Allow For New Content in PlayStation Emulated Titles[/h]
A new Sony patent published yesterday suggests that the firm may be looking for a way to add new content to legacy PlayStation titles via emulation, likely through the cloud-based service Gaikai in the future. The patent, titled "Suspending State of Cloud-Based Legacy Applications," would allow developers to modify conditions of an existing game.
"In order to create mini-games without reverse engineering and recoding a game designer may rely on the use of triggers and snapshots to provide information needed for the mini-games without having to dig into the code of the legacy game."
More technical aspects of the patent filing can be found here. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out if Sony decides to make full use of the patent. It could give players a reason to revisit some old titles from the PS1 and PS2 era.
Via NeoGAF
A new Sony patent published yesterday suggests that the firm may be looking for a way to add new content to legacy PlayStation titles via emulation, likely through the cloud-based service Gaikai in the future. The patent, titled "Suspending State of Cloud-Based Legacy Applications," would allow developers to modify conditions of an existing game.
Finding new ways to play preexisting video games can increase the longevity of older games. Instead of replaying the same level or completing the same missions repeatedly, gamers often desire new challenges when replaying legacy games. In response to this need, game designers have begun to produce mini-games. Within a mini-game, the gamer can be instructed to complete new objectives or challenge their friends for high scores in a format that was not originally designed into the legacy game. Further, since the mini-game is derived from a legacy game, the gamer already knows the characters and basic components of the game, and is therefore more likely to play the mini-game.
The patent provides an example where a player could face a boss battle with new challenges, such as having a set number of lives or limited health:
The mini-game may begin near the end of a level, just prior to facing a final opponent, or the boss of the level. A boss is an enemy-based challenge which is found in many video games. Bosses are generally seen at the climax of a particular section of the game, usually at the end of a stage or level. Due to the climactic nature of fighting a boss, mini-game designers may choose to use this section of the game as their starting point. In order to make the mini-game more challenging than the original version, the game designer may also want to limit the number of lives a player may use, or change other game parameters such as the amount of health the main character has remaining Other game scenarios may be chosen as starting points for a min-game. For example a mini-game may begin with the game player being the batter in a baseball game where there are two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and the batter's team is down by one run.
The patent proposes the use of snapshots to allow developers to inject new content into existing games without having to re-invent the game.
"In order to create mini-games without reverse engineering and recoding a game designer may rely on the use of triggers and snapshots to provide information needed for the mini-games without having to dig into the code of the legacy game."
More technical aspects of the patent filing can be found here. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out if Sony decides to make full use of the patent. It could give players a reason to revisit some old titles from the PS1 and PS2 era.
Via NeoGAF
that ds3 melting something damn
Shuhei Yoshida @yosp 
