A recently-filed Sony Interactive Entertainment game advertising patent is showing that Sony is probably going to be changing the way they advertise games to people at some point in the near future. While we don’t know exactly where this patent will be implemented, the patent says it’s a better way to advertise to gamers than through demos:
In response to increased competition, video game designers have devised means to provide potential players the ability to play a test level or portion of the video game. Unfortunately, many of these trial or teaser levels are chosen arbitrarily and may not appeal to many players.
The way that the new patent would operate would be to draw on information that the player seems to prefer, and use that data in order to figure out what games might appeal to the player. If anything, the patent seems to operate similarly to “free trials” of other games, particularly in the phrasing used in its abstract:
Additionally, the systems and methods may prompt the user to purchase the full game at the height or apex of their engagement with the interactive application.
Free trials have proven to be very successful in boosting the popularity of other games, for example, Square Enix’s MMO game Final Fantasy 14. That game, with a free trial that takes players all the way up to the end of Heavensward, its first expansion, has risen to be one of the world’s greatest and most popular MMORPGs.
Figuring out why players like certain games will be the job of a certain gaming server illustrated in the patent:
In one aspect, the gaming server includes memory and one or more processor to execute or otherwise provide access to one or more games, game data or interactive gaming application stored in the gaming server database. The gaming server also stores user profile data including various user preferences and other data regarding each user.
Hopefully this new Sony game advertising patent will end up being successful for Sony, especially if it turns out to be successful in getting Playstation gamers to buy more games.
