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PlayStation Trademarks 'Soho Engine'

3liteDragon

3liteDragon

Member
gamerant.com

PlayStation Trademarks 'Soho Engine'

Sony continues to trademark its mysterious 'Soho Engine' worldwide, triggering a fresh wave of speculation regarding what its intended use could be.
gamerant.com gamerant.com
Sony continues to trademark its mysterious 'Soho Engine' worldwide, triggering a fresh wave of speculation regarding what its intended use could be.
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Sony has continued to trademark the phrase "Soho Engine" in more countries around the world. While it's pure speculation, the term "Soho" could be a hint as to the way this engine could be applied.

Trademarks and project names have been a popular way to peek ahead into the future, ever since the widespread adoption of the Internet made them easy to find. Of course, some predictions have been completely off-the-mark, such as rumors of a GameCube Classic Edition in 2018. However, some guesses have ended up being accurate. such as trademark-based speculation that Square Enix would localize Collection of Mana in 2019. Still, trademarks for pre-existing properties are easier to interpret than all-new project names. Few people could learn much about the Wii U, for example, from its pre-release name, Project Cafe.

Sony first trademark Soho Engine in 2020 in Europe, and has now extended that trademark to Switzerland and New Zealand, according to Gematsu. Although this timing loosely coincides with the release of the PlayStation 5, the term never appeared in relation to any of Sony's marketing for the console. This means that the Soho Engine could be key for an as-yet-unannounced game, or it could have something to do with Sony's plans for upcoming PlayStation 5 peripherals.




The most obvious hint is that SoHo is a real-life neighborhood in New York City. As far as popular PlayStation-exclusive games set in New York go, the Spider-Man series immediately comes to mind. It's possible that the heavily-teased Spider-Man 2 will use a proprietary engine known as Soho Engine. The series is no stranger to serving as a tech demo for Sony, after all; Spider-Man: Miles Morales let PS5 owners enjoy impressive 4K resolutions or a 60 frame-per-second framerate, depending on their preference.

Another project in the works at Sony is its upcoming PSVR system for PS5. While Sony has revealed new controllers for the system, it hasn't revealed any games yet. Perhaps the Soho Engine is designed to facilitate high-quality VR experiences, developed exclusively for the PS5. As it stands, Unity and Unreal Engine are the most popular engines for VR development; if Sony were to introduce an easy-to-use VR game engine that slowly became the industry's de facto standard, it could give Sony a large amount of exceptionally good VR content.

Of course, Sony could actually be in the process of creating a game called Soho Engine. While this would be out-of-left-field, there are a decent number of games and movies with the word "engine" in their titles, Mortal Engines being one of the most recent. If this actually is a game title, fans will just have to wait and see what it is. Still, in the meantime, it's fun to speculate about what Sony has in the works.
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Rean no Kiseki

Rean no Kiseki

Banned
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Dick Jones

Dick Jones

Gold Member
Okay, wild stab in the dark time here is the Soho engine relates to Soho London and it relates to an emulator that plays prior generation games on the PS5. Sony UK is around Soho in London (I googled it to see any link). This is all prep before bringing the ability in upgrade form the week of E3 where its thrown out against Microsoft's Bethesda show.

Most likely, the Soho engine is anything else than that.
 
Holammer

Holammer

Member
I've always been surprised that Sony haven't done a Frostbite yet. Taking an otherwise competent engine and forcing it on all the other Sony first party studios. Instead they let them use their own propriatory code or existing ones like UE. That's a lot of development or license money flushed down the drain.
Maybe they're finally getting around to do just that? I've heard baseless speculation that MS is looking into doing or at least encouraging something similar with ID Tech.
 
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T

Thief1987

Member
Holammer said:
I've always been surprised that Sony haven't done a Frostbite yet. Taking an otherwise competent engine and forcing it on all the other Sony first party studios. Instead they let them use their own propriatory code or existing ones like UE. That's a lot of development or license money flushed down the drain.
Maybe they're finally getting around to do just that? I've heard baseless speculation that MS is looking into doing or at least encouraging something similar with ID Tech.
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It's a terrible idea to force one engine on all of your studios, EA is a perfect example of that.
 
8BiTw0LF

8BiTw0LF

Banned
I think it has something to do with 'Playstation Home'. Like SoHo could stand for Social Home - and SoHo is South of Houston Street in Manhattan - maybe Sony want to design their "social space" with that part of New York in mind? Don't know, but could be.
 
reinking

reinking

Gold Member
8BiTw0LF said:
I think it has something to do with 'Playstation Home'. Like SoHo could stand for Social Home - and SoHo is South of Houston Street in Manhattan - maybe Sony want to design their "social space" with that part of New York in mind? Don't know, but could be.
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I hope soho.
 
Kumomeme

Kumomeme

Member
Holammer said:
I've always been surprised that Sony haven't done a Frostbite yet. Taking an otherwise competent engine and forcing it on all the other Sony first party studios. Instead they let them use their own propriatory code or existing ones like UE. That's a lot of development or license money flushed down the drain.
Maybe they're finally getting around to do just that? I've heard baseless speculation that MS is looking into doing or at least encouraging something similar with ID Tech.
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although they do has tons of capable engine under their studios, im glad they didnt go down that path and not suprised they didnt do it. better allow their devs to work with whatever they comfortable with. they even allow for their devs use 3rd party engine like UE4. not to mention itseems their studios has no problem with their own propriatory engine. development also seems smooth. their devs has no problem to steadly release new games with cutting edge visuals.

forcing it like EA does could bring opposite effect. there lot of complaint about the frostbite engine from devs itself. the engine is really good for fps but not for another genre. there issue is heard since dragon inquisition days. for example Amy Heanig, complaint about the engine lack of features to design uncharted like combat mechanic. that engine might what held back lot of devs under EA. luckly Star Wars Fallen Oder use UE4 instead.

Even Square Enix didnt go down that path since Crystal Tools fiasco.
 
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CamHostage

CamHostage

Member
Thief1987 said:
Yeah, supposedly it's from London Studio, so there is a high chance that this is exactly vr specific engine.
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Feels the most likely.

Team Soho was the name of a Sony studio (in England, not NYC) who did The Getaway as well as some of the 989 Sports games. They merged in with Sony Camden to become London Studio, and that office long been the leader many of the experimental and peripheral-based products for PlayStation (EyeToy, EyePet, SingStar, DanceStar, Beats, PlayStation Home, lots of core elements and games of PlayStation VR, etc.) It would make sense that they would have some VR-specific technology to patent and share. It would also make sense to name it after Soho, as that's important to their roots (although Camden and Psygnosis are also big parts of the history) and although their signature franchise The Getaway did not survive past the second game and the PS3 prototype, Getaway DNA is still strong in games like Gangs of London (PSP) and London Heist / Blood & Truth (PSVR.)

Plus, the office of Sony Interactive Entertainment London Studio is still located at 15 Great Marlborough St, Soho London.
 
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SaucyJack

SaucyJack

Member
Thief1987 said:
Yeah, supposedly it's from London Studio, so there is a high chance that this is exactly vr specific engine.
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Yes, and whilst the article points out that Soho is a neighbourhood in New York ....... it is also an area of London. The area, in fact, where London Studio is located.
 
Mokus

Mokus

Member
Maybe it's for a new "The Getaway" game. The first games were undercooked on the PS2. Later the guy behind these games gave us L.A. Noire.
 
mckmas8808

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
kyliethicc said:
Its London Studio's engine.

They're most likely making a PSVR2 launch game for fall 2022.

Their last game was Blood & Truth for PSVR in spring 2019.
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Was this ever confirmed? Or even talked about since April?
 
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