Both Sony and Microsoft have had a series of patents come out in the last week or so, and one of them would potentially bring NFC payments to the PlayStation 6.
Sony filed a patent called “video game controller-driven information transfer,” which describes a controller with NFC capabilities that would let you tap your phone or your credit card to your controller to send information to your console. The most obvious use for this would be for payment, but it would also let you more easily import your PlayStation account to a new console.
Just like with any patent, there’s no guarantee that this would result in an actual feature for any device, but if it did, it wouldn’t be the first time this type of feature has existed. Pretty much every phone under the sun right now has similar functionality, which lets you tap your card to add it to your wallet, or tap bluetooth headphones to pair them without digging through the settings menu. So, it seems like a no-brainer to bring that functionality in some way to a console.
There are of course some security issues that Sony would have to work out before implementing this, particularly if Sony wants you to import your whole account via this method. Without the right precautions, it’d be easy to grab someone’s phone, tap it to your controller and effectively use their account.
Apple gets around this when setting up a new iPhone or iPad by bringing up a cloud that you have to scan with the new device’s camera that will then give permission to import the account data. It’s unlikely that Sony is going to put a camera in a controller, but a more simple option would be to have your phone display a pin number that you’d have to enter into the console to get past a security check.
What’s particularly wild about this patent, though, is some of the rationale behind developing it. In the patent documentation, Sony talks about the traditional methods to input this data, like an on-screen keyboard or a QR code that you scan with your phone. But, then goes on to say “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 idea here seems to be that importing all the account data through NFC will be more reliable than the current methods, and could prevent any kind of system failures during setup. NFC communication has become a lot better in recent years, to be sure, but whether it’s going to make the system less prone to failure than typing in your data via a keyboard is something that’d I’d need to see to believe.
With all of the patents that have been coming out in the last couple weeks, it sure does seem like the next-generation consoles are actually on the way. Microsoft and Sony have both filed some pretty dystopian patents, but this one seems like it’d be genuinely useful. Either way, though, expect both the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix to be quite expensive, especially if they’re announced amid the ongoing RAM crisis continues.
Image credit: Anusak Laowilas/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Jacqueline Thomas
Senior Tech Editor
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
