Sony Patents Demos That Get Worse As You Play

Here’s an interesting patent from Sony describing a video game demo whose features degrade over time. The illustration above spells it out: You download the entire game, and at first all its features are available to you. But after several hours, your character becomes less powerful. In another scenario, Sony describes a racing game that depletes the number of available tracks with each race. Eventually, you’re left with very little, unless you choose to unlock all features you once had. The patent even allows for subtler changes in a game’s sound effects, lighting and color. Sony says it could distribute these demos on physical media — it’d have to, given that Blu-ray-based games would be inconvenient to download.

It’s a unique solution to a real dilemma: Demos don’t often give players enough to go on, so they don’t do a great job of selling the game. I’m not sure why this solution would be better than, say, a timed demo, but the degrading quality makes the game harder for clever hackers to unlock. In any case, it’s definitely a weird idea to claim exclusive ownership over, but that’s the world of patents for you. [SiliconEra via CrunchGear]