Cloud Gaming & Streaming

Microsoft received 1 patent covering a cloud-based system that allows a skilled player to remotely step in and take over a struggling player's game. Rather than relying on traditional co-op mechanics, the system extracts the original player's saved game state, loads it into a separate cloud session where a helper can take control, and then merges the completed progress back into the original game once the difficult section is cleared.

Sony received 5 patents spanning several distinct challenges in cloud and local gaming. One addresses the frustration of load times and bandwidth strain by predicting which game assets a player is likely to encounter next and pre-loading only those, at quality levels calibrated to available bandwidth, rather than fetching everything at once or waiting until content is needed. A second patent tackles network instability by generating predicted video frames locally on the client device before a dropped packet would cause a visible stutter, avoiding the delay that comes with waiting for a server to retransmit lost data. A third covers a hybrid split-screen multiplayer setup where one player's game runs on the local device while another's is processed remotely, with latency compensation keeping both sessions synchronized. Sony's 4th patent in this batch deploys buffering proxies directly at 5G cell tower sites, where they manage packet retransmission with an awareness of individual frame deadlines and prepare adjacent towers in advance to handle handoffs during mobile play. The fifth patent describes an AI-driven capture system that monitors aggregate player failure data across a game, automatically requests video recordings from affected client machines to help diagnose bugs, and simultaneously identifies exceptional player moments worth preserving as highlights.

Huawei received 2 patents, both aimed at making high-quality gaming accessible on hardware that would otherwise struggle to keep up. The first describes a cloud offloading system that selectively determines which players and which graphical computations need cloud processing, then synchronizes only the object states that have changed between frames, keeping bandwidth use lean while preserving visual quality. The second patent splits rendering duties between server and client, with the server handling background environments and the client rendering characters locally so player inputs feel immediate. To prevent the visible edge of the background from lagging behind during movement, the system calculates a buffer zone based on the player's maximum movement speed and the current network latency, pre-rendering enough extra background to cover any delay.

Beijing Zitiao Network Technology received 2 patents focused on expanding what players can do within cloud gaming environments. One patent covers a method for layering multiplayer functionality on top of games that were built as single-player experiences, where isolated cloud instances normally cannot share data directly. Rather than modifying the underlying game engine, the system provisions a new shared instance to serve as the common environment for collaborative play. The second patent analyzes professional gameplay videos to extract expert move sequences and matches them against a player's current in-game situation, allowing a novice to preview and execute a recommended strategy with a single selection inside the game client.

Netflix received 1 patent describing a streaming approach that shifts the burden of image quality upscaling away from the server and onto the player's own device. The server renders frames at a lower resolution and transmits them alongside GPU buffer data such as depth maps and motion vectors, giving the client GPU enough context to perform high-quality upscaling rather than guessing at missing detail. This separates rendering quality from both server processing costs and network bandwidth requirements simultaneously.

Valve received 1 patent for a system that allows players to begin playing a large game almost immediately after starting a download, sometimes with less than 5% of the total file size on hand. The system tracks which files the game actually reads during play across a broad player base, building predictive models of what data is needed at each point in the game. Those models allow the system to stream and cache the right data ahead of time, keeping gameplay uninterrupted without requiring developers to manually specify download priorities.

InterDigital CE Patent Holdings, SAS received 1 patent for a method of embedding virtual camera metadata, including position, orientation, and field of view, directly into a video bitstream generated during cloud game streaming. Because the encoder knows exactly how the in-game camera is positioned and oriented, it can make compression decisions tailored to rendered 3D content rather than treating each frame as if it were ordinary captured footage, which allows for more efficient compression and lower latency delivery.

Adeia received 3 patents, 2 of which address the same core problem of encoding video with minimal latency for real-time delivery. Both describe systems that run multiple encoder instances in parallel across different quality parameter ranges, then select the best result rather than re-encoding, with a variational autoencoder predicting scene complexity ahead of time to determine how many parallel instances are needed before encoding even begins. The third patent takes a different angle, describing a method for inserting targeted video advertisements into cloud gaming streams at the encoder level during non-interactive moments like cutscenes, using real-time player data and network conditions to select the appropriate ad without requiring any integration on the client side.

NetEase received 1 patent for a server architecture that runs multiple simultaneous game sessions on a single machine by relying on Android's built-in multi-display and multi-user capabilities rather than conventional virtualization layers. Because each session shares a single operating system instance, the system avoids duplicating the background processes that virtualization tools like QEMU or Docker would require, freeing up CPU and GPU resources for actual gameplay.