You've probably seen headlines like "new patent will allow PS1, PS2, and PS3 games to play on PS5." The reality is that this original patent is rather old--it was filed in December 2013, a year before PlayStation Now launched, and claimed in 2012--and explicitly describes game streaming on PS Now.

The update was published on June 10 and basically describes how legacy PS1, PS2, and PS3 games could support a revolutionary new gameplay sharing functionality that lets you create, edit, and share slices of your game as interactive and playable demos.

I originally thought only PS5 games would support this feature, or it would be created using the cloud.

In one embodiment, a method is provided for creating a playable limited version of a video game and executed by a user of a complete version of a video game.

For each of a plurality of user-defined portions of a recorded game play of a user, for each of the user-defined portions; Continuous array of each of the playable portions of a video game to define a defined version of a video game based on user-defined portions, creation of a playable portion of a video game based on defined boundaries, and limited version of a video game.

4 b illustrates an interface for selecting a portion of a time line of a game play for creating a mini game or game slice, according to an embodiment of the present invention.

A recent Sony patent filed this month described the feature as "cloud-based game slice generation and frictionless social sharing with instant play.".

If the entire PlayStation Now catalog gets support for this feature, it will be the single biggest advancement in cloud gaming we've seen to date.