Share Play Sessions Are Limited To 60 Minutes

Blair Inglis 34 Comments

I wrote about how Share Play could be a brilliant feature for PS4, as you’d return to those long pass-the-pad sessions though could now do it over the internet, with Sony’s new feature allowing you to play any game with a DualShock 4 with a friend over the internet.

It seems we’ve encountered a problem, however, as Sony have revealed that you’ll only be able to play for an hour in each session.

Whether that means that you can simply leave the session and start a new one straight after, continuing from where you left off, is yet unanswered. That might be a solution, but it’s still quite annoying. There’s no word on why this has been implemented either – it seems very odd to me.

Share Play will arrive with PS4 Firmware 2.00 later this year.

Source: VideoGamer

 

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34 Comments

  1. That is rather annoying. I suspect you won’t get trophies or a save file either (for the player streaming/playing remotely).

    To be fair, as good and as clever as this feature is, £30-£40 has never really stopped me from buying a game that I can play with a mate, that I know we’re going to enjoy. For co-op, it’s usually worth every penny.

    It’ll be a great way of trying a game you wouldn’t otherwise play, albeit then you can usually just borrow it from said friend.

    • Save files are confirmed (did you even read anything about this before jumping to a conclusion?) this sorta implies trophies as the two are linked.

      60min sessions are pretty reasonable.

  2. I felt that its best use would be that which was touched upon in the original story – Where someone encounters difficulty or just doesn’t know what to do & then incorporates the help of a friend to point them in the right direction.

    If used in that way, 60 minutes should be more than ample. However, it does seem a strange decision if it was indeed intended so that you could share the experience in its entirety with a friend.

    • Del could start pimping himself out ;)

      • He could, but I am not sure how that relates to gaming! ;)

  3. I guess this to stop one person buying a game and creating a session where their friend can play it in its entirety if they so wish. From a business POV it makes sense, but it’ll get mightily frustrating if you’re genuinely playing a “pass-the-pad” type game together.

    See what happens I guess. Won’t be too bad if you can kick off another session with the same user as soon as one finishes…

  4. This seems silly to me.

    Maybe that are just implementing the basic first off as a tester on how many users use this feature. They may extend the length of play in future updates after seeing the stats.

    I just drawing at straws really.

  5. I thought it would be limited to about 30 mins, so that’s all good as far as I’m concerned. It should pretty much serve its purpose. Some people would never end up buying games if there was no limit.
    I wonder whether it’s got a 24hr time frame dividing the sessions?

  6. I just want to know 60 minutes and friend log out and log back in, 60 minutes every day or month or forever? Still it’s not too clear ATM.

  7. Its meant to let a friend help you through part of a game. Its not meant for you to “Share” an entire game to let your mates play it.

    An hour is more than adequate to get past a problem in a level or something. The game is running locally so saves and trophies occur as if you were playing it.

    • Makes sense, for that purpose it’s ideal.

    • Exactly, pretty much what I said above.

    • Probably shouldn’t have called it “share” then!

  8. An hour seems okay, enough time to help someone out or to give somebody a feel of how the game plays, without them having to download and install the whole game first.

  9. For helping a friend online in playing through a difficult part I would think an hour should be enough. However, isn’t SharePlay also about the co-op sessions (e.g. Far Cry 4) where you can invite a friend to play co-op even if they don’t have the game? If so, that part would be better off with a little more than just one hour.

    • Far Cry is a different deal, you get a key – a PSN code – for the entire game, which expires are 2 hours.

      If you used this system, the you couldnt play co-op as your remote chum would be playing on your PS4, meaning you could not.

      As I said, its not meant for game sharing.

      • I’m not sure what you mean by that; just rewatched the bit from Gamescom where Andrew Ryan talks about SharePlay and he does say that you can invite a friend online to play (competitively and co-operatively) with that person without them owning or downloading the game. Since that is a part of SharePlay this would mean that a co-op session is limited to one hour as well.

  10. Just an off topic question by the way: who the hell gave me that avatar? I have never uploaded a picture to my user account. :o)

    • It’s assigned automatically when you don’t have a gravatar picture.

    • You got assigned one by random.

      • Ahh. I don’t mind, I kind of like it.

      • You actually look a bit like a Clicker.
        Have you been bitten by anyone lately?

    • You can go to gravatar.com and using your email and TSA login you can add your own avatar should you wish to.

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