Sony has filed a new patent for adding trophies to old, emulated games – opening the door for retroactively adding trophies to games that came out before they rolled out the Trophy system.
The new patent (via Bartman013) is focused on the “method and apparatus for awarding trophies” and goes on to mention how emulated games could trigger a trophy “by comparing a memory value of the emulated game to a predetermined value and assigning the one or more trophies to the user based on the detected trophy trigger.”
Furthermore, the patent description mentions how Sony can give trophies in “previously released or sold video games, without modifying the original game.” This means games older than the PlayStation 3 era (which is the generation Sony introduced Trophies) could get trophy support.
The patent also mentions cloud computing, suggesting it could be used with old and emulated games on Sony’s PlayStation Now service. Another tidbit from the patent is the ability to perform disk checks, to verify in-game frames and strings for validity to unlock trophies.
The new patent is curious due to the timing with the rumor that Sony is permanently closing the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation Vita digital stores. The company hasn’t been focused on their back catalog of titles, especially compared to Microsoft – who keeps adding more backwards compatible titles to their Xbox consoles every month.