At CES 2025, Sony showed the world an amazing concept bound to revolutionize how we game: the Future Immersive Entertainment Concept. It further scales up interactive entertainment with smelling in-game odors, better audio, haptic feedback, and even atmospheric effects. With this revolutionary innovation, Sony is making a bold move toward changing how we experience the worlds of our favorite games.
The Future Immersive Entertainment Concept was developed to immerse players into a multisensory experience that married the traditional visual and auditory components of gaming with the sense of smell. Sony wants to make gaming more emotionally deep and real with scents that match what happens in the game. One could imagine playing The Last of Us, then suddenly being hit with a pungent pine aroma as one enters a forested area, or that of smoke from some fire off in the distance-the kind of immersive world that would be envisioned in Sony’s future gaming.
In materializing this vision, Sony’s Crystal LED panels immerse the gamer into an area filled with high information: subtle and explicit clues. It was much more than graphics because its integrated visual display, active auditory feedback, and even haptic and olfactory cues could work all together to create truly immersive-immersive gameplay that actually yanked one right into a game world for probably the very first time.
Core to this invention, though, is the incorporation of real-time scent emission in correspondence with gameplay. According to one novel system outlined in Sony’s newly filed patent application, detachable fragrance cartridges emit different smells depending on what is happening within a game: if one is wandering through a forest, a whiff of fresh pine might waft in; if one is in a fire-scorched room, smoke fills the room.
Paired with the scent system, it also uses familiar haptic feedback and spatial audio to round out an experience for which Sony has become known. The players can feel the action of the game, and the sound moves around them in 3D space. In a showpiece at CES 2025, the story of The Last of Us was brought into that new level by including multisensory elements of such a highly valued story. A world of gaming was never just visual and auditory; it is now both tactile and aromatic.
For example, the scent system in Sony is an innovative mechanism that works on the principle of linking fragrance release to gameplay. Special slots have been provided in the game console to accommodate detachable fragrance cartridges that emanate smells as and when a specific moment or situation arises. The cartridges should be engineered with neutralizing capability in case a smell is not required anymore and needs to be replaced; this would, in turn, reduce any unwanted smelly overlap which might destroy the effect. But again, the key here is accessibility-the technology’s use should not become exclusionary to those who suffer from scent sensitivities or allergic reactions.
While the technology is promising, it remains to be seen when, if ever, it will make its way out of the R&D labs into consumer products. Companies like GameScent, meanwhile, are already dabbling in scent-driven gaming with an independent device pairing with AI to watch for sound effects in games and release companion scents. But Sony’s mooted approach seems a far from awkward marriage with the gaming platform, offering quite a seamless end-to-end fit with the experience.
Of course, with any new technology, it also carries its share of challenges. First and foremost is assuring scents are well-released and neutralized, so one wouldn’t be dealing with a continual nuisance of odor disrupting an experience. Allowing for players with allergic reactions or sensitive noses will surely be yet another hurdle to consider if Sony ever hopes to present this technology to a mass market. But all in all, the capability of creating such a world that pleases all senses is truly intriguing.
Though still in its infancy, the idea behind Sony’s Future Immersive Entertainment could unlock a world of possibility beyond gaming. Imagine being able to smell the jungle as one flies through a theme park on a virtual roller coaster or taking part in a VR experience with scent to make stories come alive. Applications are endless for this technology, and it is much more than just a game-changer for fans of PlayStation.
It launches in a competitive landscape where Sony has long histories trying to introduce sensory innovations in gaming. Examples include Microsoft experimenting with odor-emitting controllers in 2013 and issuing pizza-smelling Xbox controllers to celebrate the launch of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. By contrast, Sony’s approach, along with Crystal LED panels and haptic feedback, would realize a more integral player experience.
But really at its core, Sony’s Future Immersive Entertainment Concept is not just about making games better-it’s about the extension of the very concept of storytelling. Long at the forefront of innovation, Sony’s new system perfectly aligns with the company’s vision of narrative everywhere, where stories extend across multiple mediums to create deeper, richer experiences for their audiences.
