When someone asks you to picture the good old days of retro gaming, what is the first image that jumps to mind? There is a good chance that it might be a cartridge. Indeed, the cartridge has become an icon of nostalgia amongst gamers who long for the classic experiences of their childhoods. But most never expected to see cartridges again—at least within a modern context. But now, there is a new patent from Sony which indicates that gaming cartridges could be part of our futures and not just our pasts.
What the Patent Reveals Regarding Possible PS5 Cartridges
You can view the patent here, where it was uploaded by LetsGoDigital, the same website that first unearthed the design which turned out to be a PS5 devkit. That design was found in a patent which Sony filed at the Instituto Nacional de Propriedade Industrial (INPI) in Brazil. This latest patent was filed on May 11th, 2019, with the same office.
There is almost no information contained in the patent, save for an image and the name of the designer. That designer is Yujin Morisawa. His job title at Sony is Senior Art Director of Corporate Design.
As for the image itself, it is not terribly detailed, and as such, is a bit ambiguous. But it sure looks precisely like a cartridge, and it is hard to imagine it could be anything else.
So could the PlayStation 5 make use of cartridges? It seems a possibility, although maybe not a strong one. It actually seems more likely that Sony intends to use these cartridges for a handheld device. Right now, anything further we could say about it would just be pure speculation. We have almost nothing to go on. But LetsGoDigital seems to be a good source, since the site already proved its merit when it turned up those PS5 devkit images. So, who knows? They may have uncovered something exciting yet again.
If we find out more about the mysterious cartridge patent, we will let you know about it in our PlayStation news section.