Sony Smell-O-Vision lets you smell odors from games: Is it doomed to fail?

Sony Smell-O-Vision is a new technology that allows gamers to smell the odors of video games. The company has filed a patent for this technology, which suggests development and integration into consoles is still in the early stages. Gamers might have to wait a few generations before accessing any such feature in mainstream AAA titles.

It is worth noting that this isn't the first time hardware developers have tried incorporating senses other than audio and visuals into a video game. The tech was discovered in the 1950s by Hans Laube. However, it never gathered public attention and was restricted to high-end movie theaters and education purposes.

Sony, on the other hand, is different. They are one of the largest players in the video gaming market and have the resources and money to fund the development of odors in video games.

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Is the Sony Smell-O-Vision doomed to fail?

An image depicting how Sony's smell-related tech will work (Image via Sony)

The Smell-O-Vision tech is nowhere near ready. The hardware developer has a lot of tinkering and observations to do before bringing it to mainstream gaming consoles. We are not expecting this tech to roll out anytime this generation since the PS5 already set the benchmark for the ninth-generation consoles.

In addition, the odor-related gaming market is very niche. It is almost unknown in the community, which can make adoption pretty difficult. Thus, even if the Sony Smell-O-Vision is brought to the masses, it might just be sold as an accessory, like the Xbox Kinect.

The Sony Smell-O-Vision technology is promising, to say the least. On one hand, it adds a whole new dimension of immersion to video games. However, the tech has some limitations too.

Video games aren't always pretty. A very typical scenario in most AAA games depicts marshes and battlefields. Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption 2 are great instances where I wouldn't like to smell the surroundings. Zombie games are in a whole other league. Besides this, developers have tried to incorporate smell into games before. That only failed.

That said, innovation exists, and Sony Smell-O-Vison might be implemented in a completely different manner than previous iterations of the tech.

Thus, it might be interesting to see whether and if the Japanese tech giant integrates it into a product or sets it aside just to extract royalty from other niche products that utilize it.