New Patent Seemingly Details PS5's New Game Invite System, Picture-In-Picture

According to a new patent, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has seemingly made some changes to how game invites will work on its next-generation PlayStation 5 console.

Presently, if you receive an invite from a friend, you can accept that invite and hop straight into a multiplayer session with them, but for PS5, things look like they might work a little differently if this new patent is any indication.

PS5 Set To Boast Picture-In-Picture, Reworked Invite System

Confirming the PS5’s ability to run many more processes, apps and games concurrently than either the PS4 or PS4 Pro, this patent suggests that players will be able to not only accept invites from other players whilst doing non-game related activities such as watching Netflix, it also allows players to track the invited game in a picture-in-picture style format.

Godfall PS5 Leak — If this patent is accurate, you could be watching, say, The Witcher Season 2 on Netflix, receive an invite to join a Godfall battlegroup, and literally have the game going on in a corner of the screen while you watch Henry Cavill do his thing. The future!

The key, though somewhat tech-heavy takeaways from the patent are as follows:

Launching occurs without user intervention at the invitee computer device
Invitee console will show a gaming session launch window associated with the launching, based on the invitation
Invitee console will display the window as a picture-in-picture if other game processes or apps are running
The game will launch as a background process
Launching is occurring automatically with one or more applications are running in the foreground on invitee computing device

Systems and methods for establishing a multiplayer gaming session are provided. A method can include selecting at least one invitee computing device from a plurality of invitee computing devices to join the multiplayer gaming session and a game from a list of games for the multiplayer gaming session. The method can include transmitting an invitation to join the multiplayer gaming session to the at least one invitee computing device and causing the at least one invitee computing device to launch the game in a background process with one or more applications running in the foreground at the invitee computer.

While this might seem like just the latest in a long line of PS5 patents, we’ve got a good feeling about this one actually being figured into the final production model of the console that gamers will see during Holiday 2020.

Given the huge amount of processing power that the PS5 is tipped to possess, such an advancement in how the console deals with running applications in parallel would seem to be definitely plausible.

Stay tuned for more as Sony is set to fully reveal any day now.

Source: USPTO via RespawnFirst