PlayStation really hasn’t given itself a break ever since the announcement that it’s killing physical games. Just when you thought the company should stop building its infamy, the Sony subsidiary was also granted a patent, the description of which sounds like textbook dark patterns and the justification a tad absurd. This is because it describes being able to make contactless payments via the controller of a console.
The patent itself is titled “Video Game Controller-Driven Information Transfer”. To be fair, on the surface, the patent simply describes letting the controller of a PlayStation console have NFC functionality. It doesn’t immediately mean being able to read credit or debit cards – nor does the patent mention those specifically – since as Nintendo has demonstrated, there are other uses for the tech. Of course, look elsewhere in the patent and you see images with text like “Payment Successful!” and “Gift Gard [sic] Received!” with a phone nearby. Digital wallets exist, after all.
Further not helping the company’s case is the patent’s description. One paragraph starts with “video game players have found it desirable to store payment method information and account information such as credit account information, bank account information, gift card information, digital wallet identification information, crypto wallet identification information, and associated credentials in their accounts for facilitating and managing video game purchases, video game credits, in-app purchases, and the like”.
Dark Patterns of a Dark Path
Despite the way it sounds, PlayStation justifies these features as improving console performance. The patent notes “however, facilitating and coordinating these operations by performing multiple operational steps using multiple devices often causes performance of the video game console to suffer and/or one or more operations of the video game console to fail … The techniques described herein overcome the foregoing challenges and others by providing video game controller-driven information transfer”.
Another application of having NFC tech on a controller – and frankly a more functional one – is logging in guests to your console. With NFC, your friends could have their accounts signed in via the PlayStation app, the data of which can be transferred to your console using NFC tech.
It’s worth noting at this point that, as with patents, these are not always features that see the light of day. In fact, one could be generous and argue that PlayStation is patenting this so that, say, Nintendo doesn’t get to do this in addition to its existing amiibo shenanigans. The patent also depicts what looks like a PS5 (with a disc drive, it’s worth pointing out), as well as what looks like a DualSense, but with definitively non-PlayStation symbols on the face buttons.
(Source: USPTO)
