PS4 Digital Game Libraries Can Be Accessed From Any Console

16
Lee Bradley

PlayStation 4 users will be able to access their digital game libraries from any connected PS4 in the world, Sony has confirmed.

Speaking at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Sony’s Research and Development Senior Team Leader Neil Brown explained exactly how the process works and how the console’s “Play As You Download” tech makes it an possible.

“You can visit your friends house you can log into your account and play any game from your digital library, which is good. But how useful is that if it takes half a day to download the game you want to play?” he asked. 

“With Play As You Download you get much quicker access to at least the first section of the game so you can start playing quicker. So this makes a digital library a practical option in the real world.”

Brown also explained in more detail how Play As You Download effectively puts an end to lengthy game install times.

“A similar system also works on Blu-ray,” he said. “Chunks are automatically copied to the hard drive in the background. This means that after the first few minutes your game can rely on having faster read speeds from the hard drive, which provides a better experience for players.

"And this is a completely background process for the player. They don’t have to wait for anything to install before playing the game. The game will launch as soon as the disk has been put in the drive.”

 

Comments
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  • So it's pretty much a more customer friendly version of what the Xbone was trying to do?
  • Holy crap. Shit just got real!
  • Title was a little deceiving. I thought this was the fabled "ps4 will play digital PS3 games" announcement I've been hoping for. Jot mad, I believe its eventually coming, its what Gaikai is doing with ps1-2 games, only a matter of time.
  • Microsoft, do you see how its possible to do this stuff WITHOUT pissing everybody off?
  • Sounds enticing, albeit, that I am not one to want to start my game over from the beginning because the first few chunks of data downloaded are not the end game material. So either you wait for it to download fully or you play from the beginning. While this is a cool idea, I find it rather pointless.
  • Sounds like it'll work great with my high speed internet. =)
  • sweeeet
  • Nothing worse than going to a midnight launch for a game only to have to install for an hour before you can play. Im glad they worked something out.
  • @8, Or driving 100mph from work.... rushing to the mail box for your Day1 release... knocking over your kids because they stand between you and your console... tearing off the plastic as you stretch to you console.... THEN! Wait one hour for a Day1 patch, then a second hour for the game to instal on your hard drive, ALL while your kids are screaming because daddy might have a small addiction to video games
  • @#9 You forgot the third hour as Sony decided to release a major firmware update on the very same day. I'd much rather they figure out a way to play installed games without having to pop in the disk and WITHOUT going down the ill fated DRM road that MS tried. I know it takes very little effort to swap disks and I'm just being incredibly lazy here but it would be nice to be able to 'boot up' a game whilst I'm still playing another and have a on screen prompt telling me when it's ready to play, all done from my Dualshock 4. Oh and background syncing as well please.
  • @5, I loved the way The Last of Us let me install MP and jump right in while single player was installing. It may be pointless to you, but not everyone.
  • @10 yeah after 5 years of xbox, the downloads are a bit of a shock. The ps4 will rectify this.
  • @5: with a PS+ membership you can save your game info to the online portion and access it from any PS3 that your account is on.
  • "PlayStation 4 users will be able to access their digital game libraries from any connected PS4 in the world, Sony has confirmed...You can visit your friends house you can log into your account and play any game from your digital library." @1, 2, 4 Read it carefully before going into blind fanboy mode. This is already possible now on PS3 and Xbox 360. This isn't even similar to the family share plan that the Xbox One was going to have. The only thing new being stated here is the play while you download feature. However, reading the above quoted statement makes me worry. They say you can play anywhere, but specified when you sign into your account. Does this mean that PS4 content can only be played if signed into the content owner's account? I'm thinking that while Sony may have eliminated the limit on account activations, they may have also made it to where you can't game share anymore.
  • @14 I am assuming that digital content refers to stuff you download or DLC. Physical content should be unaffected. The problem I had with Microsoft was that their sharing policy appeared to be aimed at physical as well as digital. I was an Xbox gamer for 6 years so `fanboyism` doesn't come into it lol. Sony are selling their console to me, Microsoft do not seem to know HOW to sell their console. That is why I am buying ps4 next gen, and if next-next-gen the xbox2 is better than ps5, I will buy that.
  • Something I hope that both companies never do is something similar to what SOE did with DC Universe Online... Small download, but the majority of the game isn't actually downloaded.
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