Sony is basically a patent troll these days…

I’m pretty sure the majority of their patents are things they never intend to use, they just want to be able to charge anyone else that wants to do it.

90% to 95% of all patents are never commercialized. It is not exclusive to Sony.

This is your usual daily reminder that each of the tech giants obtain something like 3000 patents a year, by patenting everything under the sun. For the sole purpose that if one of them sues another for the violation of one such patent, the other can dig up a hundred of them to countersue.

buy

lmfao

Silly rabbit, buying isn’t owning!

Paying for*; buying is owning

so… a payment terminal ? Why can they patent this?

Probably because it’s on a controller. It is fucking stupid.

Payment terminal, can’t patent that. Payment terminal on a toaster? Yes you can patent that. Lol

Payment terminal on a toaster

BRB!

At this point, it’s getting into findom territory. “Don’t want your toast to burn you disgusting pervert? You make such pathetic financial decisions. You should give that money to me instead, and maybe I’ll consider only burning your toast a little.”

Thanks for making me remember old scars.

That’s so excellent

Visa and MasterCard already excerise findom. You aren’t allowed to use your money on anything that makes mommy visa and daddy mastercard look bad. Else you will be banned.

or you’re an ICC judge that issued Netanyahou arrest warrant just for a lil’ genocide

There’s supposed to be an inventive height. Obvious combinations aren’t patentable by law. But the patent offices are all stupid and just lets it happen and force people to take it to court.

None of the idiots in these comments or even reporting on this understand how patents work. They didn’t patent anything–they filed an application that has years ahead of it before they argue with the USPTO about what it actually covers, if they ever even achieve a granted application. Their starting point, first claim posted below, is already somewhat broad and easily designed around so I suspect if they get anything at all it’ll be nothing more than an unenforceable line item asset they can use as security for financing purposes.

1. A method for operating a video game controller, the method comprising: detecting that an electronic device is within a predetermined distance from the video game controller, wherein the video game controller is wirelessly coupled to a video game console; in response to detecting that the electronic device is within the predetermined distance from the video game controller, emitting a signal from the video game controller; receiving a notification from the electronic device, the notification indicating that the signal was received by the electronic device; in response to receiving the notification from the electronic device, receiving a first message from the electronic device, the first message comprising payment method information for a video game player associated with the video game controller; and transmitting a second message from the video game controller to the video game console, wherein the second message comprises the payment method information, and wherein transmitting the second message serves as a response to an event that has occurred at the video game console.

I thought we are just renting our bought games?

Well we sure ain’t renting them for free

I couldn’t care less about this. Every online store lets you store your payment information, so no matter whether you type, scan, tap, or upload your card, you only have to do it once (whether that’s a good thing or not).

The worse issue is that Sony is arguing in court that you don’t own your copy of a game and is discontinuing them on discs so you’ll have no choice but to buy it from their store. Say goodbye to meaningful sales and discounts, and they’ll just remove it from your PlayStation when the rights expire or it’s inconvenient for them…

Remember when iCloud purchases on kids iPad exceeded like 2k$… well we will see a vulnerability and hackers taking advantage of second hand controllers market with cc info being leaked.

Sony already had that happen once. A dog mangled its owners controller and racked up a whole $8 in charges. Possibly more but that’s all I could find in the article.

On the plus side now your kid won’t have to beg you for VBucks or whatever. /s

Life imitates art

ALTController with a credit card inserted in the bottom captioned "EA made a new controller that makes it easier for you to win"

Sony really made the meme real, what a fucking world we live in

This was a joke once upon a time

And the easier victory of course provides you with a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Wow, I completely forgot about this gem of a quote. 9 years it’s been already, apparently

The meme is so old, tapping cards to pay did not even exist.

The way Sony are moving I wouldn’t be surprised if Xbox retake console superiority, Sony seems terrified of PC and Xbox has merged with it, along with Sony standing firm on your purchased games not being yours.

Retake? They never had it, they’ve always been the also ran behind Nintendo and Sony in sales. Only 360 came close to second place in that generation.

For most of the generation, 360 was ahead of the PS3. It came out an entire year before the PS3, which helped it become more popular than any other generation of Xbox. PS3 overtook it like a year before the xbone and ps4 were released.

And while technically Wii was in first place, they were never running in the same competition. You needed a Wii for Nintendo exclusives and at the same time, couldn’t play a lot of the other games on it, or if you could, you had to put up with significantly worse performance. Wii+PS or Wii+Xbox was a much more common combination to own than PS+Xbox for a reason.

That was a lot of words to say “you’re right”. Released early to get first mover advantage and failed to fully capitalise on it. Like I said, Xbox never held a crown to retake.

What players? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Drink verification can to continue

Welp. It was a good run.

and by tap we mean walk past.

Makes it even easier for kids to use their parents credit cards. What a service!

Nintendo already have NFC readers on their controllers, so they could potentially challenge this.

buy rent for an undisclosed amount of time with multiple options for losing possession early

Submit verification payment.

Sony turning the PS into a P. O. S.

No, not sale.

doesnt the store save the card data? i dont get it.

It doesn’t have to. You can enter it every time if you want.

Why does Sony keep deciding to do comically user hostile things?

Is it their current console domination and PC prices? I think long term they’re fucking tensioned over hard.

But also, why would you need this when the console already has your credit card? This is more annoying.

If implemented properly this would actually be an improvement:

• user has to authorize each purchase by tapping the card someone without the card can’t buy on the user’s behalf
• payment data doesn’t have to be stored so no payment data they can lose

“if implemented properly” lol no

I may very well buy this controller in the future, but it would be for playing on PC, so that feature would go unused.

IIRC Nintendo already did something similar, though only in Japan. And there was a game using that as input. Not credit cards thought, would be interesting to go into debt…

this is just fucking gross

Ah yes make it easier for kids to steal money from their parents. Genius.

Put your credit card to the controller to resume playing.

....but not own them.

I wonder if I counts as sony sucking my balls if I tap my balls to the touch pad

Roblox go brrr

This initially sounds horrible, but really is it much different from just typing in the details? Result is the same.

You better hope all the kids’ parents keep their credit cards locked up in a faraday cage. All it takes is waving the controller past, and the charge is made. It’s a lot different than having to take the card out and type in the numbers.

No? It’s no different.

My point is, it’s hard to read the credit card numbers when they’re not visible inside a wallet or pocket. It’s the difference between having to ask to use the credit card and just using it without the parent noticing (until it shows up on the bill). Point-of-sale equipment to charge credit cards by tap aren’t exactly something people leave their kids unattended with.

Ah, that does make sense.

Counterpoint: children have a lot of time to scheme and prepare for the right time.

This would be kinda crazy to happen by accident. The person would have to be in the cart and have the card accidentally register. You can also set a PIN or require password entry before purchases are made as an already existing security measure. Those things would protect this as well. Idk if theyre automatically set up on a child account but I hope so

I wonder if someone could trigger it by sitting on the controller or tapping it against someone’s wallet pocket. Doesn’t matter, because I’m done with PlayStation and Sony, despite having never owned one myself.

I did wonder about that. I’d assume no for sitting as my card doesn’t work until it’s like half an inch from the scanner. For the wallet tap there’s also simple software solutions like needing to opt IN to the controller pay and needing to confirm paying via controller on the console with a couple second timer before dismissing to avoid someone also confirming by accident. I think it’s a fairly useless feature but it’s neat in concept

I would say it’s the same as just leaving your billing details in, but I wouldn’t trust Sony not to leak that info even if I owned a PlayStation.

My concern is buying a used controller with this. How would I be assured my credit card details arent being stolen bc the guy on facebook marketplace “made some adjustments”

If the controller is storing the details then yes that’s a big problem. I would hope it would just put the details in RAM long enough to send them and either the memory gets overwritten or all the memory is erased when the controller is off.

Yes, yes it is. Way lower hurdle and effort.

PayStation

Has Nintendo not already done this with their NFCs on the Wii U? Chat am I going insane?

Anybody else want to ditch society and go out in the wilderness and create a combine?

The billionaires are turning us into powerless mindless serfs.

Sony is really trying to reiterate to consumers that the only thing they care about is your money.

“We’re going to design a new controller. Its the exact same, but now you can give us money easier.”

To RENT games

soon

Mother distraught at 9 year old son buys $432,000 on Playstation Store with credit card taken from purse.

As store payment? sure, why not, include fancy terminal in gamepad… totally won’t increase price of device, like we lack options to pay in internet, but having one more, ok…

U don’t mean [pay to continue], [buy in-game currency], [pay to skip ad mid boss fight] or [pay to gain access to next stage without waiting for stamina]? not at all… suuuuureeeeee…

There’s already nothing stopping anyone from adding the latter I believe? In freemium games anyway

Tap credit card to parry, hold credit card down to block. Move credit card forward, down, down-forward followed by payment to shoryuken.

$5…$10…$20…$50…C.C.C.Comb$100 BREAKER!!

$300 controllers coming soon, still with stick drift and rubber joystick tops that turn into slime over time.

And if it’s anything like my Dualsense, needs to be charged all the time. I basically use it as a wired controller now and barely use my PS5

I skipped the PS4 gen and went from 3 to 5. Is it just my poor memory or did the PS3 controllers not last longer? I know the 5 has more going on in it, but the battery tech has to improve greatly as well in ~14 years

Ps3 controller where basically the best controller ever made in terms of battery life and reliability. Hall effects, amazing battery life, could fall from a 2 story drop and keep on trucking.

They where so reliable that’s it’s part of the reason I think they have been slowly making them worse ever since.

So that people have to actually buy new ones.

Outside of a SINGLE battery replacement from age, my original day 1 ps3 controller is still going strong while every PS4 and 5 controller I’ve had has started to fail in one way or another in like a year ish.

I think the Wii U pro controller had the best battery of all controllers. That thing would just like a month and there was barely any standby drain, it kept well ahold of it’s charge. But the DualShock 3 was a close second.

If they fixed it, you wouldn’t have to buy new ones

First of all how much easier can it get? I just have my paypal or venmo saved and can’t even remember the last time I needed to update it, it always works and always there.

Second if anything it should be on the console not the controller. Its just another thing that will drain my battery and for something that will never get used. If its on the system i could care less. Will there be options to buy without it?

Yeah I understand the hate but this is a nothingburger when it comes to micro transactions. They can already milk us for all we have with ease. Sounds more like patent abuse honestly. But as far as scummy practices, this doesn’t really make them any worse than they already are.

Sony patent could let players tap a credit card on their PlayStation controller to rent games.

• Ftfy, Dexerto, if something can be taken away from you at any time, you don’t own it, you’re only renting it.

Next it’ll be Mountain Dew verification cans

Like I’m ever “buying” a game from them again.

this is going to be awkward when my taint-chip starts to trigger purchases.

And once the barrier to payment is that low, well, microtransactions in games naturally follow.

• “Tap your card now for a character boost for this boss fight”

Hold the controller closely to your parent’s wallet and unlock this amazing new skin.

You, and YOU alone can help Solid Snake in his mission. Should you choose to accept, the objective is simple. Remove the RFID resistant wallet from your parent’s back pocket. Inside, there will be a plastic card that contains the nuclear codes. Take that card, and press it to the face of your controller. Hurry, agent! The world’s counting on you

Ah, the same corpo who once filed a patent about having to yell the name of a product whenever its ad pops on the TV.

Oh don’t tell me, they’re trying to pavlov the population?

Do you need a patent for that? Can you even patent something so silly and trivial?

I took an existing thing and put it inside another existing thing. That’s a novel idea, right?

We could put card terminals in everything! Put card terminals in the fridge to pay for food?

I can’t think how this is any better than just using the card you already saved on the account. Even from their point of view, this is an extra step in the payment process.

That’s why all these microtransactions are in their own made-up currency.

Somebody explain the appeal of consoles in 2026 to me. I can easily connect any controller to my PC, and get games at half the price for it?

As someone who contemplates getting either a PC or PS5 for playing FF7 Remake trilogy: a used ps5 goes for around 250€ - 400€

A PC that runs the games at medium settings costs… Well, at least double that. A used RX 6700 XT alone is almost the price of the whole console. And that’s just the GPU, I haven’t even looked the RAM prices… Then add CPU, motherboard, SSD…

So the appeal is price.

Edit: RX 6700 XT is the official recommended GPU for running Rebirth at medium settings

Ease of use for a TV is the only benefit I can see, I have been PC for 15 years now but nothing ever works perfectly when you try and use it on a TV with controller only.

Steam Big Picture and Steam Link work pretty well, but that’s true. They don’t work as perfectly as a console does.

Ps5 is way cheaper than a pc

Yes and no. You can still get a mini pc or even a laptop with 16gb of ram and a 256-512 ssd for 500ish. It won’t have as much graphics horsepower as a ps5, but it’ll be enough to play a lot of games at 1080p 60fps or use resolution scaling etc. games are significantly cheaper on pc as well.

There was a deal for a 5060ti and 16gb of ram complete build for like 1200. That’s not that terrible vs a ps5 pro brand new.

At this point I’d say only benefit is initial cost investment. Exclusives are rare, and a physical token of purchase in the form of a disk was the last straw for myself.

When a company is this focused on making it easier for you to give them your money, maybe it’s time to walk way

basically patent on theft. make it easier for stupid people to bankrupt themselves while brainwashing them.

It’s kind of incredible how dedicated you guys are to hating things just because someone you didn’t like did it, I respect the game a little bit.

Honestly, 2 points:

• Actually surprised this was not a PS5 launch feature

• Not a bad idea really. Could cut down on some forms of scam, if you had to use a physical object instead of a bunch of numbers saved on your computer.

Middle class gonna whore itself out to impulse purchase useless game skins. Middle class? More like idiot class lmao

Oh ya my cousin rather get a personal trainer then vote 🤷‍♂️

rent

Sonys thing not mine.

But children don’t have credit cards…

…shit

Sony patents game console with embedded credit card skimmer, with child-friendly features

call me when you can pirate games with playstation controller

First, they discontinue the production of physical copies and now they pull off this rent-seeking bullshit.