This article was published on August 21, 2019

This Sony patent could mean the PlayStation 5 will actually be the PlayStation V


This Sony patent could mean the PlayStation 5 will actually be the PlayStation V

Sony Interactive Entertainment reportedly filed a recent patent for what appears to be a new gaming console, complete with drawings indicating it will have a radical design featuring a V-shaped indent on top.

Credit: Let's Go Digital

The โ€˜leakโ€™ comes to us from Letโ€™s Go Digital, and the documents appear to be real. But donโ€™t get too excited: this is almost certainly not going to be the final look of the actual PlayStation 5 console. Chances are, this is one of the concepts for the PlayStation 5 developerโ€™s kit. Dev kits are usually bulkier and have more ports than the finished product because, at this stage, thereโ€™s little reason for engineers to concern themselves with aesthetics.

This design, which the patent attributes to Sony Director of Engineering Yasuhiro Ootori, has a giant V on top of it though. Iโ€™m guessing it wasnโ€™t put there to accommodate specific hardware. And that begs the question: Why would a top engineer at Sony go through the trouble of coming up with a fancy design for a dev kit?

The easy answer is that he felt like it. When youโ€™re the boss you can do stuff like that. Maybe he just liked the shape โ€“ perhaps he was inspired by the noble duck and its penchant for flying in a mighty โ€œVโ€ formation. But Iโ€™m going to toss one right at you from way out in left field: Sony will eschew Arabic numerals going forth and rebrand its new console as the PlayStation V. Boom. Did I just blow your mind?

As my colleague Rachel Kaser pointed out to me earlier today: It wouldnโ€™t be the first time Sonyโ€™s put the letter V in a console name. Thereโ€™s the PlayStation Vita. Everyone knows that โ€œvitaโ€ is Italian for โ€œlife.โ€ And Italy is where is Rome is at (source: Reddit) โ€” ergo Roman numerals. I rest my case.

Do with this wild conjecture what you will. In the mean time, check out these super-cool images of previous PlayStation dev kits curated by @TheYadda on Twitter (hat tip).

Weโ€™ve reached out to Sony with our nonsense, weโ€™ll let you know if anyone responds.

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