So, Sony’s upcoming update feature is going to let me borrow and play my friends’ games without actually owning them? Holy crap, I’m on board. But how does it work? And what game limitations (if any) are there?
“How it works is, for example, say, a friend has a game that I don’t. I ask them to let me play it, and if they send me an invitation, I can access their PS4 and play while watching the video that is streamed.” Said Sony Worldwide Studio big man, Shuhei Yoshida, explaining the new SharePlay feature in an interview with Weekly Famitsu. “You could call it a mini PlayStation Now.”
That sounds pretty damn awesome. While you may expect some sort of limit in what specific games will be compatible, Yoshida assured that aside from games that use the PlayStation Camera, like PLAYROOM, any game that can be played with the Dualshock 4 will be playable via SharePlay. “There is no need for developers to do anything for their games to be compatible with SharePlay.” Yoshida said.
Another feature is that players can save their game data to their own account, rather than their host’s. “You can save your save data to your own account, so if you like a game you played via SharePlay, you can buy it for yourself and continue where you left off.” Yoshida explained. “Or, if you get stuck in a game, or there’s an enemy or stage you find difficult, you could hand over the reins to a friend for those areas.”
UPDATE: A Sony representative reached out to explain that Famitsu’s interpretation of this quote was incorrect. Says Sony: “In Share Play, the visitor (the one who doesn’t own the game) takes over the host (the one who owns the game)’s account, so the visitor cannot save their play data onto their own account.”
Note that because SharePlay is basically the streaming of gameplay between 2 PS4s, it stands to reason that whoever is lending their game will basically be lending both their game AND their PS4. If your friend wants to borrow a game for an hour or so, it means you won’t be able to use your PS4 during that time — unless it’s to assist, disrupt, or just plain troll your friend.
Another catch is that since this is a PS4 exclusive feature, it is currently limited by the PS4 library, which, at the moment, is not as extensive as its predecessors’. This is a limitation that Sony is obviously hoping to change in the upcoming months.
SharePlay will be an included feature in the upcoming 2.0 system update for the PS4, scheduled for some time this year, and I can’t wait to try it out.
今年の東京ゲームショウはPS4にとって非常に重要なポイント――SCE WWS吉田修平氏に訊く【gamescom 2014】 [ファミ通.com]
This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour with a U from the British isles.
Comments
36 responses to “How Digital Game Sharing On The PS4 Will Work”
-__- borrowing a game by streaming it from a friends console. Sounds terrible
This is just not gonna work very well at all. If we all had fibre networks without intermittent packetloss then it might be playable – but that doesn’t take into account latency. I couldn’t imagine a more frustrating gaming experience than one which designed to be run locally but is played over the internet via streaming. If they can’t make the game run locally it’s worthless imo.
Gotta use that $380 million gaikai somehow yer?
The whole streaming is the future thing is driving me nuts. I just wish Sony would write an emulator for PS1 and PS2 so I can play classic games on ps4 that way. Streaming a PS1 game is probably just going to erase whatever good memories i had of that game with an awful streaming experience.
The whole “streaming is the future” is just corporate speak for we want 100% control. From a business pov having the ability to hinder performance or outright shutdown “old” applications creates a massive potential increase in revenue. It further pushes this notion that you no longer own software, rather you are renting it.
People may say that they’d never deliberately hamper performance just to potentially get people to upgrade or pay more, you only need to look at comcast, time warner and it’s throttling of netflix. They most certainly would.
I know it’s a cynical view, and i’m sure that their could be potentially awesome uses for it but i lack any sort of trust that companies wouldn’t abuse that power. Time and time again they’ve proven the more power they have the more likely the consumer will be fucked over by it.
THANK YOU!
It’s a completely unnecessary ‘walled garden’ that Sony is creating so they can control and charge their customers through the ass for a product that simply won’t work.
It’s every bit as greedy and anti-consumer as ANYTHING even EA have ever done. When EA released Simcity with a convoluted (fake) “cloud processing” that meant the game didn’t work properly at least they were only charging a standard retail price for the honour of playing a shitty, broken product.
Sony knows full well that it won’t work well/ at all for the vast majority of their customers. In the case of backwards compatibility they’re implementing a convoluted system because the alternative (on-board emulation) won’t allow them to charge people exorbitant, by the hour prices for software that in many cases is already owned and linked to their PS accounts.
If EA or MS did the same thing the internet would be drowning in a sea of nerd tears. I have no idea why so many people are obsessed with this idea that Sony are the world’s most consumer friendly company.
Even if you’re a die-hard Sony fanboy surely you want to be able to play PS1/2/3 in a practical and reasonably priced fashion? Hold them to account! Where are all the people raging about an always-on Xbone because they were in the army? Did all those people vanish over the last year?
I tried explaining this to a work colleague but his response remained “Nope. No business would deliberately hurts its customers ..that’s bad for business.” I gave up on him pretty quick.
When there is a monopoly/duopoly and no competition, yes they will – no ifs and or buts. Why?? cause they can. Fuck comcast doesn’t even give a shit anymore, they don’t even try and hide it.
That ADSL upload rate it’s hoping to make this un-usable.
Yeah but this is an problem with infrastructure here. A lot of the first world does not have this issue. I am glad things like this are happening as it will mean people who are not in a uproar about the NBN will get more inconvenienced hence they will add to the people screaming for it. We can still indirectly benefit.
Not just the first world 🙁
That is awesome.
Yea the minimum internet speed I connected to in Vietnam was faster than the possible speed on ADSL2… 🙁
Hmmm, it’d be a lot more appealing if the service let me download the game and save data, but still had the limitation of only letting me play it when my friend isn’t (and he hasn’t shared it to anyone else)
I think the problem with the save file sharing would be having 1 friend complete a game then getting people to share those achievements of a completed game with other people.
All this is – is glorified remoteplay ps4=ps4 nothing new unfortunately.
Theres no difference between doing this on a vita except you have a bigger screen and a dualshock 4 but lose the portability. Never the less its always interesting when they try new things but I think this ones a bit of a miss in terms of real-life functionality.
That would be fun with my 384kbit upload speed
Well according to Hockey, you poor people don’t have anything to upload.
Why are poor people playing video games anyway. Why don’t they just marry an investment banker and get the government to pay for their law degree with an interest-free loan?
Because they are LAZY.
No why don’t they just inherit more coal, god!
Ha. I am enjoying your comment for once.
Also, do you have an account on Polygon by the name of Archaotic?
So they can’t play their PS4 and I can’t save my progress?
Who would actually be excited about this feature?
It’s as bad as the “Keys to Kyrat” for FarCry 4 – “Our feature for the PS4 is (essentially) a 2hr demo code you can give to 10 friends”
Wow, that is awful…
Great idea, poor execution.
More than likely, Sony tested the download client way and found a loophole that players could use to trick their console into granting endless playtime on the digital share copies.
cant remember, coz it was all ages ago, but with the PS4, can we not just…. physically borrow a game from someone?
yes you can.
But this method allows you to share across the internet!
But you cant digitally borrw a game from someone. Till these measures are in place anyway.
I think it is a great idea. A corporate tries their best to let you share your gaming moment with friends without hurting their profit.
In their perspective, a player who finished his burrowed/rental game (especially single player game) is stealing their money.
but yeah, impractical..
Buy digital games on Xbox one. Sign in on a friends console. They now can play your games for free, even when you are online and playing them on your own console.
It’s the best feature ever and my friend has all my xbox one game for free to play with me multiplayer.
I don’t know why Microsoft doesn’t advertise this feature, maybe to avoid pissing off disc retailers?
I’m guessing they don’t advertise it because you’re not really supposed to be able to do it and you can get banned from Xbox Live for account sharing.
What??? Really? How is it sharing accounts if they have their own account? Are they just supposed to not play the games that work on their console that were purchased legally?
Essentially we play one game on two accounts at the same time. If they dont want you to do this they could easily just not allow it. Its not password or account sharing or anything like that, they have their own account, like family sharing on the same xbox
I live with my roommate and have two xbox ones in the one room, so its kind of ridiculous that I would get banned for this. If they do ban me then theyre banning a customer who probably spends more on xbox games and services than 10 average gamers so id be pretty furious.
Sorry, I thought you meant that your friends logged into your account to use your game on their own console, I didn’t realise they were playing the game online while logged into their own account.
I guess that’s an interesting quirk of how family sharing/multiple logins work on the Xbone vs. how they worked on the 360. Still trying to wrap my head around it, really.
Yeah no definitely not password/account sharing. We have our own accounts on our own consoles, but occasionally I’ll sign into his to play something and vice versa. We noticed that not only did we end up with each others games, we also could play each others games, at the same time, while logged into our own accounts.
With how well syncing works and how easy it is to sign in on a friends console I just assumed it was a feature!
So essentially we only have to buy one digital copy of a game, so we go 50/50 on games now. I genuinely thought it was a family sharing feature or something, I thought it was awesome! Kind of freaked out now that it may actually be bannable. They could make that clearer.
It is a feature. It’s on network sharing and its fantastic. They don’t advertise it because its essetially a lost game sale. The caveat is that both xboxes have to be on and logged in. So power usage etc.
Oh, that’s similar to how if my friend logs into my Xbox 360 on his own account he can use my digital titles linked to that console with no issues – but if I went to his house and used my account to download one of my games to his console, I could only play my game on my account because I can verify my rights online, but without my account his console can’t license the game and he’d be locked out of it.
So I guess it’s not that different – but using each other’s consoles is not a big deal when you’ve got them side by side.
I’ve got a gigabit link with ten gigabit+ fibre backbone here that presents lag when opening <1MB documents across <500km. I’d like to have a word with you, Sony.
I know one market that this could benefit- hardcore achievement hunters. Hire Chinese sweatshop gamers to grind achievements for you!!!