It’s Sony a design though.
A patent filed in South Korea has sparked suggestions that Sony is looking to grace the handheld market with their presence once again. And while the PS Vita’s sales were far from astounding, Sony’s past comments suggest they’re not leaving the market. But exactly what they’re working on is still very much anyone’s guess.
Source: Engadget
The design popped up this week this week and shows what Techtastic has described as an “electronic game cartridge.†The cartridge also has what looks like a connection in the bottom of the device. Something that would possibly connect to a console as a companion. It could even be something similar to the Wii U’s gamepad, an idea that would represent some movement on Sony’s touchpad for the PS4 – which is something they’ve been fairly open to wanting to build on. If we’re being pragmatic, the design (if it leads to anything) is most likely going to be a peripheral to Sony’s PS5 rather than the PS4.
And the design does echo the sentiments of John Kodera, who said that after the PS Vita the company had to stop “separating portable gaming from consoles, it’s necessary to continue thinking of [portable gaming] as one method to deliver more gaming experiences.” Which suggests that a hybrid device similar to the Switch is a likely target for Sony.
Of course, as Engadget rightly point out, this isn’t the first patent Sony has filed in recent times. They patented a design which looked eerily like the Switch back in 2017 and that doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere. Though Kodera’s remarks and even the relatively short time between the 2017 patent and this cartridge patent does suggest that Sony is looking to re-enter the portable gaming scene in some manner. Just how they do that and what they come up with is something we’ll have to wait and see with.
(Via Engadget and Techtastic)
