Sony’s future PlayStation Controller may let you rewind a game

The gaming industry hasn’t seen any ground-breaking advancements in the last few years. All we get is some tech that improves the performance and makes the game more realistic with features like ray tracing or PSSR, and probably, that’s about it.

But all that isn’t revolutionary or something that brings novelty to the gaming experience. But that may change soon, as Sony recently filed a new patent that may let gamers rewind a game to revisit important scenes. 

Such a feature may also help those who are not good at a game and want to rewind to a scene to get their next move right in the final boss fight. Sounds good? Here’s everything you need to know about Sony’s new ‘advanced game rewind’ feature. 

PlayStation controllers may soon get a rewind button

According to a Sony patent (spotted by Tech4Gamers), its PlayStation division is working on a gameplay rewind feature. The feature will allow users to rewind to old bookmarks in a game, which may sound familiar if you are a PC user. 

The patent hints that Sony is planning to add a universal button to the DualSense Controller, which will allow users to pick any bookmarked moments in the game.

The rewind button may be placed next to the D-pad. Pressing it will let users save their favourite scenes in a game, and not just one scene but multiple of them. Users can then press the universal button on the controller to rewind to the old scene or bookmark. 

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Notably, with a single press, you can enter the rewind mode and save that moment. Then to access the bookmark, you can press the universal button again and then select the bookmarked scene or chapter. 

This sounds a bit like game saves, but it also appears to be a rewind feature like the one we saw in 2003’s Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If it’s the latter, this is an interesting feature we can’t wait for. 

Some of the Nintendo games also come with a rewind feature, for instance, the Mario games.

Such a feature may have two use cases, for those who want to revisit a scene and for those who simply suck at a game and want to rewind just a little bit to make the right move in the final boss fight. 

Now, this rewind feature may not work for all games. Expect mostly story-driven games to have such a feature, but again if Sony plans to add a dedicated rewind button on the controller, game makers will have to work to make their games compatible with it. 

While it appears that we may finally have something unique in the gaming scene, let’s not get too excited as it’s just a patent. Patents may not often materialise, but if this one does, it could be a game-changer feature.