Hardware Rivals Trademark Registered by Sony in Japan

Hardware: Rivals – a new game name supposedly registered by Sony in Japan – sounds like it should be PlayStation's take on that wacky Dreamcast role-playing release that depicted the demise of SEGA, but there's greater evidence to suggest that it's the next title from London Studio. We're going to assume that it'll support Project Morpheus, too.

Here's where it gets interesting: Italian website Multiplayer.it reported months ago that some of its readers had been invited to a PlayStation 4 beta for a super secret game in development at the British outfit. Allegedly this title is a vehicular combat escapade, featuring jeeps and tanks, which can be outfitted with different weapons and power-ups.

Want us to tie all of this together for you? About three of you may remember that London Studio actually released a game called Hardware: Online Arena for the PlayStation 2 in 2002. It was one of the first titles to use the console's Network Adapter, but never released outside of Europe. Hardware: Rivals sure sounds like a sequel of some kind, doesn't it?

Presumably we'll learn more about this at Paris Games Week. Maybe.