PS4 Will Let You Log Into Your Account At A Mate’s House And Play Your Games

Sony, on something of a roll just now, have today confirmed that you’ll be able to log into your account anywhere else, and play your PS4 games. If this sounds familiar, it’s similar to what Microsoft were offering before the dramatic 180 turnaround a few weeks back. Or, at least I think it was, through all the fog.

Speaking at Develop [via], Sony’s R&D senior team leader Neil Brown said that when you visit a friend’s house you can “log into your account and play any game from your digital library” which is great news indeed.

Of course, we’re missing a few details, like how many times can you do this, with how many friends, and how long does the game remain, but – yeah – this is good to hear.

Sony are also talking about Play As You Download, which is a rather un-snappy but altogether more description version of PlayGo. It’s the system that lets you start playing whilst the game is still downloading. This isn’t magic, it’s simply the main executable and the requisite first level, for example, but it’s much better than waiting for 40GB to crawl down the pipes.

And then take another hour to install.

“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,” said Brown. “So this makes a digital library a practical option in the real world.”

“A similar system also works on Blu-ray,” he addded. “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.”

Now that’s magic.

26 Comments

  1. “The game will launch as soon as the disk has been put in the drive.”
    And have installed the day one patch of course.

    • ha ha, I was waiting for that. I didn’t expect it on the first comment though.

      This was the most frustrating thing with the PS3. You don’t play a game for a month or two, get excited to stick it in the drive and BOOM….patch download needed. GRRR

      • Or, if like me, have a lot of old games in your backlog. Bad Company 2 this week, 85mins patch download before I could play it. :(

  2. Hang on is installing mandatory? As I do not want that at all.

    • i hope so. blu-ray speeds are shit, even with the PS4’s boosted one.

      • I can’t argue with read speeds on PS3 but don’t know enough about PS4. However, my main gripe would be having a bunch of 12 Gb files that I then have to sit and wait to delete before I can play a new game. I think all games should have an optional install like on the 360 but done on the fly instead.

      • I would have hoped a TSA writer was able to tell the difference between fact and Microsoft’s urban myths about technologies it didn’t have.

        For your information the PS3 bluray is pretty fast, the ps4 even faster. Both considerably quicker than the Xbox DVD drive.

        http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157

        2x Blu-ray Drive (72Mbps(9MB/s))
        Single Layer (2x CLV) – Constant Linear Velocity (Same speed across entire disk)
        Double Layer – Couldn’t find any data but no games have been released on a double layer yet.

        Entire Blu-ray Disk is read at 9MB/s.

        12x DVD-Rom Drive SL (9.25MB/S-15.85MB/s(AVG ~8x(10.57MB/s) DL (4.36MB/s-10.57MB/s(AVG ~6x(7.93MB/s)
        SL(DVD-5) 12x Max (5-12x Full CAV) – Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)
        DL(DVD-9) 8x Max (3.3-8x Full CAV) – Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)

        SL DVD is 1.57MB/s > SL Blu-ray
        DL DVD is 1.07MB/s < SL Blu-ray

        Majority of 360 games are on DVD-9.

      • Stats. Lovely.

        Nobody mentioned the 360 drive apart from you.

        Tell me how a Blu-ray drive is faster than a hard drive.

      • SillySeason, what the hell are you on about sir? Get back in your hole. ;-)

      • I think what sillyseason is driving at is how fast the blu ray drive is compared to a DVD drive and considering DVD was MS choice apart from a few games that require a small install had in most cases better visual from a DVD than the hdd/blu ray combo Sony went with. If you don’t believe look at the Eurogamer df faceoffs 360 usually came out on top on muti platform and before you scream xbot or fan boy trust me I am in away but a fan of gaming I have a gaming pc ps3 psvita with plus and x360 xbl gold.

        Sony will win hands done on the future faceoffs due faster blu ray drive and fast ram.

  3. already been done on pc with a few MMOs, WOW is one that i know uses something similar.

    download the main file, then some data, the starter area, then downloads the rest in the background.

    anyway, not having to install after downloads is a big step up from the PS3, being able to play before the download has finished is even better.

    the roaming thing might work like it did on 360, you can download on any machine that has your account but any machine other than the one where the content was originally purchased would have to be online while using it.

    of course on the 360 getting your account onto anybody else’s box, without physically taking a memory card with the profile with you, was a right pain in the backside.
    this whole account recovery procedure, that took ages.
    then when you go back home, you have to then re-recover your account on your own machine.

    • This was one of the few problems with XBL but it was quite a bad flaw.

    • They completely changed that so it was a lot faster, rather than recovering the profile, it was in some way stored online so when going to another system it was a quick setup and would save it for use later on even if you had gone back onto your own 360.

  4. “They don’t have to wait for anything to install before playing the game” except for Day 1 patches!
    Pessimism aside, this is a great feature to have. I’d also like a feature where you can lend a game to a friend, even if that means you can’t play it while they have access to it, it will make it far easier to see if you or they like the game before they buy it.

    • Tis sicker than sick, sicker than a pogo stick!

  5. I’m very pessimistic about this as, as you say, the details on how many machines and what not haven’t been confirmed. They promised this and more with the PS3 before changing their policies completely after a couple of years and became very arsy about it at the same time.

    • If they keep it to two sign-ins (like now)?… that’s fine with me. Perhaps there’s no change there.

    • I’m far less pessimistic, I think this will work well with Sony’s improved remote account management.

      You’re right in that they originally offered 5 system activation, but eventually wound that back to 2 systems, probably at the request of publishers and indies who were suffering due to simultaneous game sharing.

      To Sony’s credit, they allowed any machines that had Ben activated to remain activated, and any games on those prior to the changeover date to keep running.

      They also introduced the ability to deactivate a machine remotely (ie: through their website), a function you could previously only do by phone (and usually only after pleading your case), or on the machine directly.

      How I think PS4 will work:

      * You can still activate two machines for personal use. No change.
      * You can log into a friends PS4 and play, but cannot sign into either of your two main machines at the same time. But must activate it online before you do.
      * You will automatically be logged out after a fixed time, probably 6-12 hrs. There will be warnings prior to this happening to allow save games.
      * When your friends logs in to his account after you leave, it automatically deactivated the games you may have downloaded through your account whilst there. He cannot play those games with his login. This does need a connection to work.

      • I believe you can still share with 5 accounts, its just only 2 accounts can play simultaneously. The other 3 accounts need to be activated/de-activated to play. Also sometimes theres a 24 hour cooling off period between switches.

  6. I’ll be glad to see the back of load times, I think the worst game I’ve played for having to wait ages for every level/race to load is GT5. Love the game but you can just about make a coffee before the race can start. I’ve hoped they’ve improved it for GT6.

  7. If you think about it, this was technically already confirmed as soon they announced play as you download. Because it’s what we have already, with extra play as you download technology on top.

    We’re already allowed to go to a friend’s house and download our games to play. Only we have to wait for them to actually download before playing them on PS3.

  8. Great, now just add a
    “You’ve played the first level, realised you’ve made a horrible mistake and would like a refund” option! ;)

    I’ll buy the bigger games on disc if i can but smaller games should start pretty swiftly after purchase with PAYD.

  9. ability to play my games library like this is already available on PS3 but limited to 2 consoles at a time. I wonder how many it will be for PS4?

  10. Not fussed either way as I can already do this with PS3. Not having to wait ages on a game fully downloading is a bonus though. :)

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