U.S. Patent No. 10,688,390: Crowd-sourced cloud gaming using peer-to-peer streaming

Issued June 23, 2020 to Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC
Priority Date: November 5, 2018

Summary:
U.S. Patent No. 10,688,390 (the ’390 Patent) relates to real-time crowd-sourced gameplay control using peer-to-peer streaming. The ’390 Patent details a method of using a streaming technology named WebRTC to create a peer-to-peer, direct connection that avoids multiple hops that negatively impact latency in a video stream. A host can stream video to another user, who in turn can share the video to another user, and so on. In some embodiments, other players may be able to join a game session and takeover the controls to help out. In some implementations, the primary and secondary user devices allow for real-time interactive gameplay in the cloud video game session. Peer-to-peer streaming may be used to have a massive mutli-player online gaming experience without the cloud gaming provider needing additional resources to support secondary users. 

Abstract:
A method includes: executing, by a cloud gaming machine, a session of a cloud video game, the session configured to generate gameplay video; streaming the gameplay video from the cloud gaming machine over a network to a primary user device; wherein the primary user device is configured to stream the gameplay video over a peer-to-peer network to one or more secondary user devices; wherein the primary user device is configured to process primary inputs, that are generated from interactive gameplay associated with the primary user device, and secondary inputs, that are generated from interactive gameplay associated with the one or more secondary user devices, to generate aggregated inputs; receiving, over the network by the cloud gaming machine, the aggregated inputs from the primary user device; wherein executing the session of the cloud video game includes applying the aggregated inputs to update a game state of the cloud video game.

Illustrative Claim:
1. A method, comprising: executing, by a cloud gaming machine, a session of a cloud video game, the session configured to generate gameplay video; streaming the gameplay video from the cloud gaming machine over a network to a primary user device, the primary user device configured to render the gameplay video to a primary display; wherein the primary user device is configured to stream the gameplay video over a peer-to-peer network to one or more secondary user devices, each of said secondary user devices being configured to render the gameplay video, respectively, to one or more secondary displays; wherein the primary user device is configured to process primary inputs, that are generated from interactive gameplay associated with the primary user device, and secondary inputs, that are generated from interactive gameplay associated with the one or more secondary user devices, to generate aggregated inputs; receiving, over the network by the cloud gaming machine, the aggregated inputs from the primary user device; wherein executing the session of the cloud video game includes applying the aggregated inputs to update a game state of the cloud video game that is processed to generate the gameplay video.