Sony files a patent for a new game cartridge, but what is it?

The PlayStation Vita is no longer directly supported by Sony for several years, the company prefers to focus all its resources on the PlayStation 4. However, it appeared (briefly) that the game cartridges some at Sony, if a recent patent filing was an indication.

A South Korean patent filing, spotted by the Dutch TechTastic website, was released this month. It concerns an "electronic game cartridge". It's nothing like what we've seen before with a video game system. big round hole on one side and one port at the bottom of the other. It looks a lot like the Apple block that surrounds its headset when it comes with an iPhone, and it does not seem like it will come into play. a system.

As one of our readers pointed out, the device also looks like a piece of the Toio children's toy platform, which Sony first revealed in 2017. The song in question is connected to the top if it is indeed the same as the images of the patent.

Just a year ago, Andrew House, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, left office and said there was "no big market opportunity" for a dedicated portable gaming system out of Japan. The Nintendo Switch has managed to bridge the gap between handheld consoles and traditional consoles thanks to its hybrid design, but its games are not based on the same type of power as the titles of Sony.

Nevertheless, we would not be opposed to Sony getting back into the notebook market. Despite the commercial failure of the Vita, it was an impressive system capable of producing stunning visual effects and receiving special support from Japanese and independent developers.

We hope that the cartridges could still make their comeback, perhaps with the new generation PlayStation. To date, we know very little concrete information about the system, but Sony has confirmed that Something is in the works. Microsoft has provided nearly as much information about the next generation of Xbox systems, although it has been reported that there are actually two different consoles. One will be a traditional system similar to Xbox One, while the other will be a cheaper, all-digital system designed to take advantage of the xCloud project.

Updated November 27, 2018: Updated to reflect the fact that the images could be identical to the Toio children's toy platform.