PlayStation patents idea for controller that takes contactless payments

As Sony continues to push the limits of 'all publicity is good publicity', PlayStation has patented an idea for a game controller that can take contactless payments.

This follows the announcement that Sony will be phasing out physical discs in 2028, which will effectively kill the cost-savvy process of buying a game, playing it and then trading it into CeX to get most of your money back.

The physical disc move has courted plenty of controversy, with one lawsuit claiming that it will have a bad impact on the price of games going forward.

Of course, Sony is far from the only gaming company to court controversy by trying to maximise their profits; another example can be found at EA Sports, where FC 27 was recently given a 16 age rating due to the "paid random items" found in Ultimate Team.

There was also a memorable story recently involving a young Minecraft player who ran up a bill in the tens of thousands on his father's company credit card.

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And now comes the news that PlayStation has patented the idea to create a video game controller that can take contactless payments, making it more simple than ever to make spur of the moment purchases with any bank card that players can get their hands on.

The patent was spotted by Dexerto, and it has now been widely shared online. If you're a fan of poring over legal documents yourself, you can take a look at the application right here.

Under the catchy title 'Video game controller-driven information transfer', the patent goes on to describe the various ways in which data could be sent through a controller - if this patent was ever put into practice.

The abstract summary of the application notes, "Techniques disclosed herein pertain to improving video game system performance. In some examples, a video game controller is wirelessly coupled to a video game console and operating the video game controller includes detecting that an electronic device is within a predetermined distance from the video game controller.

"In response to detecting that the electronic device is within the predetermined distance from the video game controller, a signal is emitted from the video game controller and a notification indicating that the signal was received by the electronic device is received from the electronic device.

"In response to receiving the notification, a first message that includes payment method information for a video game player associated with the video game controller is received from the electronic device and a second message that includes the payment method information is transmitted from the video game controller to the video game console."

By the sounds of it, then, Sony wants you to be able to tap your preferred payment method onto the controller in order to make a payment.

We should note that tech companies file patents all the time, and not all of them lead to actual real-life products. If we hear more about this idea going any further, as the PS6 release date inches closer, we'll be sure to let you know.

Read more:

• PS6 release date hasn't been decided yet, and you can probably guess why

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Authors

Rob Leane is the Gaming Editor at Radio Times, overseeing our coverage of the biggest games on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, mobile and VR. Rob works across our website, social media accounts and video channels, as well as producing our weekly gaming newsletter. He has previously worked at Den of Geek, Stealth Optional and Dennis Publishing.