Sony patented a neck wearable that lets games blow air at you

Sony Interactive Entertainment published US patent application 20260357800 A1 on November 12, 2026, detailing a neck-worn wearable built to blow air on command from a separate machine. Titled "Wearable Device and Method of Controlling Air Blowing Device," the record is listed in USPTO Patent Public Search (and will eventually filter over to Google Patents, though it hasn't been indexed there yet).

A patent application is not a product announcement. Hardware companies file plenty of weird experimental concepts just to plant a flag, and most of them never get anywhere near a retail box.

The English abstract is brief, since the full description and claims aren't available in the bibliographic record. A device worn around the user's neck carries a communication unit, a control unit, and "a plurality of air blowing devices configured to supply air to the neck or a part above the neck of the user." The communication hardware takes in a control signal from an external apparatus, and the onboard controller runs the blowers based on whatever that signal tells it to do. Sony filed US application 19/664,769 on April 30, 2026, claiming priority back to a provisional application (63/802,735) from May 9, 2025.

Why this is a PlayStation filing, not a desk fan

That external control signal is the whole point here, especially once you pair it with the International Patent Classifications attached to the document. Alongside mechanical pump classes F04B 39/12, F04B 45/047, and F04B 49/06, the filing sits under three video game categories: A63F 13/28 for game output that alters the environment around the player (the same bucket used for vibrating chairs, scent dispensers, temperature, or room lighting), A63F 13/52 for output driven by what's happening on screen, and A63F 13/98 for optional detachable game accessories.

Read together, the abstract and those game classifications mean a console or headset could decide when the collar blows air at your neck or head. I'm skeptical that many people want another piece of plastic resting on their collarbones just to feel a draft, though PlayStation has spent the past few years cramming tactile gimmicks into everything it sells. The DualSense controller leaned hard into voice-coil actuators and adaptive triggers when the PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020, and 2023's PlayStation VR2 went so far as to stick a vibration motor straight into the headband.

It's also easy to mix this up with Sony's Reon Pocket line, which you shouldn't. Reon Pocket devices are thermoelectric personal neck coolers from the broader Sony Group, whereas this filing comes directly from the PlayStation side at Sony Interactive Entertainment and centers on externally triggered airflow rather than personal climate control.

Two airflow filings in seven days

Five inventors are credited on US 20260357800 A1: Yasushi Okumura, Akihito Nishiike, Kentaro Yoshida, Kyosuke Uchida, and Koichi Shiono. Several of them have deep backgrounds in Sony's physical feedback research. Okumura is a Sony inventor with granted US patents across actuators and augmented reality, while Nishiike and Yoshida have both worked on tactile interfaces and haptics, including fluid-driven membranes and pressure-pulse feedback.

They aren't the only engineers at the company thinking about wind. Just one week earlier, on November 5, 2026, Sony Interactive Entertainment published a separate sibling application (US 20260348399 A1, "Fan Device, Wearable Device, and Program for Driving Fan") about driving fans on a wearable. Whether either concept ever survives internal prototyping is an open question, because convincing players to buy a headset is already hard enough without asking them to strap on a synchronized breeze.