Share Play: What do you expect from it?

For those who haven't heard, the next big PS4 update will be released this Tuesday, and Share Play will be among its many new features. Share Play promises to turn any local multiplayer game into an online mutliplayer game, and let you play any game your friend owns for an hour at a time, as long as they're online to start it for you.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/08/12/upcoming-ps4-system-update-to-v2-00-to-add-share-play-youtube-and-more-to-come/

The best way to think about Share Play is like a “virtual couch”. PlayStation 4 will create an online local co-op experience by allowing you to invite a friend to join your game—even when they don’t own a copy of it. With this first-of-its-kind feature, you’ll be able to play games with a friend just as if you were together in the same room. Let’s say that with games… you’ll be able to invite your friend online to play against the Miami Heat for the championship as the San Antonio Spurs in NBA2K, tackle the challenging Towerfall Ascension Quest Mode together, or aide, heal, and protect you as Igniculus in Child of Light’s local co-op mode.

With Share Play, you can even jump into a game to assist a friend. For example, if there is part of a game that you can’t quite finish, you can invite a friend to take over your controls. Like handing over the controller to a friend on your couch, your screen will be shared as your friend gets through the part of the game that has been giving you trouble—can’t get past that part in The Last of Us: Remastered when you’re hanging upside down? Get a little help.

The question is, how well do you really expect this all to work? Do you think it's going to require seriously high-speed internet for both players, or only the host, or neither? Will games that aren't played over super high-speed connections be an unbearable lag-filled mess?

If it really does work nicely with most connections, could this end up leading to fewer game purchases? Or as players get tried of always needing their friend around to start a game that they're really enjoying, do you think it could lead to even more game purchases?

And if someone is streaming a game from their friend, will the system allow them to save games on their own console, so if they run out and buy the game themselves they can continue from where they left off?

What do you think?

This could end up being completely amazing or crushingly disappointing. Why aren't more people talking about this?

I'll go with cautious optimism. The passing a controller part seems neat, but the scheduling seems like the hurdle to overcome, especially with so many games having adaptable difficulty. What's the chance it will take you less time to find someone to do it for you than to adjust the difficulty, or look up a let's play that shows how it's done.

The co-op part looks interesting, but I'm wondering if I read correctly that it only works if the game has a couch co-op option.

You did read that correctly, because the system works by taking the activity of your console and sharing it with someone else. That's why only the host has to have the game. If you could play non-local multiplayer through the share system, the host's console would have to be essentially running the game for both players at once, which is why Diablo 3 local multiplayer should now work online through Share Play, but Battlefield 4 multiplayer would not.

And while getting a friend to play a hard part in a game for you is one possible application of the feature, I think calling up a friend and saying "Hey, I just got a great new game, hop online and I'll let you try it." will be much more useful.

Of course, Share Play is only one of the new features in the update. Here's a nice overview:

@spaceinsomniac

Probably a sign of how often I stream that I'm more interested in being able to upload video clips to YouTube, change my background, organize games, etc. Basically all the stuff that was probably the least technically difficult for them to implement.

That said, I'm also a little surprised that it seems like we're the only two people talking about this. I came to the forum the other day specifically looking for people talking about it, since it seems like it has the potential to be really cool. Maybe we're both in the wrong forum, and people over in the NBA Live 15, AC:Unity and DA:Inquisition forums are planning meetups already.........

That they aren't talking about?

I suspect that Microsoft was researching how to incorporate their old family sharing rule and Sony got wind and implemented their own version. It is a good idea but honestly I would never use it, having to get the other guy to confirm every hour that I am allowed to play again is a deal breaker. It would feel like I'm pestering them. And when he's letting say 1 or 2 other people play his games, that's gotta be really fucking annoying having notifications pop up all the time asking if someone can keep playing. Not to mention when I am letting people share my games.

Not only that, but if I want to play more and if he's not at the TV or whatever, that could be an annoying wait until he returns.

It's obviously a step in the right direction, though. It'll be interesting to see Microsoft's version.

Good to see Sony is moving along with these policies too, but I'm not so sure their particular implementation is the best. Having coop in some games looks like a great idea, but getting permission every hour seems like a hassle, like the owner has to babysit, or something. I don't know. I can see why Sony would want to prevent a person from saddling their way through due to a friend who did purchase it, depending on what kind of game it is. This is all very interesting. We'll learn a lot in the coming weeks.

Tried it out earlier and its pretty neat. I shared out Destiny to a friend in the party chat and he said it was perfectly playable. I also like how i can just share my stream and they can watch without a delay.

Seems amazing if it works smoothly on both ends.

It works really well. I got to try Evil Within last night and in return I let my friend try Shadows of Mordor. This is a winner.

If you have a fast enough internet game sharing works. Not having a good upload speed equals it not being playable at all though if your streaming it out to someone else. But when I was playing on @ll_exile_ll stream I had no issues with lag at all. Every character I controlled seemed to have little to no input lag.

I'm really excited for this. I may be able to get some more Sports Friends and Towerfall in now.

Johann Sebastian Joust via Share Play anyone?

@marcsman: Is there a time limit? The video showed what looked like an hour countdown and I got concerned.

If not, this seems like it could be the absolute shit. Playing games with no online MP coop (Spelunky for example) is going to be fantastic.

@bollard: There's a one hour time limit on share play, but once the hour is up you can just re-invite the person to play right away. I'm not sure if that's just for letting people play your games single player or also if you're playing co-op modes but I imagine it makes no difference and it's always there.

@bollard: Yeah it's 60 minutes. But I'm pretty sure you can jump right back in. I haven't tried that yet

@marcsman: Is that for both single player and second controller stuff? Would suck to be playing something and have your friend get booted partway through because the hour was up.

I tested this a bit yesterday with a friend of mine, and for the most part, it worked. Little laggy (more so when my friend was hosting it because my internet isn't as good as his), but it seemed to work. And was pretty cool. Stuff like being able to play SportsFriends online when the game doesn't have any online modes is rad.

@bollard: The time limit is only for the guest you invite. Whoever is hosting the game can keep on going. The way it works is The guest can watch the game, then the host can turn the game over to him for SP games like Shadows of Mordor & Evil Within. The host then becomes a spectator. Diablo III UEU it turns into co op or the guest can take over. Whichever the host designates. Now tonight I have to try Child of Light and see if that is co op.

Trophies go to whoever is hosting, correct?

That is the one question I have. I am assuming the guest will not be able to get trophies.

Which honestly wouldn't be a huge deal considering how impressive this feature actually is but would be a welcome addition if it's not there now.

You are basically playing the game for free, so it's no big deal.

My next thought is how good is this feature going to be with AC:Unity? ( off the charts IMO)

With the multiplayer one the video suggested it acts as if the guest is actually signed into the PS4, so for those trophies should go to both players.

Sounds cool! Too bad it's streaming the game since I'm on a WISP, in the country, and my actual max speed is 256k. :(

Why is there barely any talk of this? It seems to me to be the most impressive feature this gen has given us so far. Like really this just seems amazing to me.

I had a chance to try this last night, and at least as a host it worked well. @spaceinsomniac played Spelunky for a few minutes, and then we did a bit of co-op with Towerfall Ascension.

He said there was some lag at his end, and the graphics were a little... fuzzy I think.

I don't know how much connection speed effects things; I could host, but the system said he couldn't, due to connection.

FWIW, I tested my connection and was getting about 30 both up and down.

Has anyone tried a three or four player co-op session ? Just curious to know if it would even work.

@sarahsdad: I had tried it when the update was just released but the person I was trying with told me that accepting the invite basically froze his entire PS4 interface and after several minutes of trying we just gave up. I've also been unable to upload a clip onto my YouTube account, but I did successfully upload an image to Twitter once. PSN as a whole seems to be kind of a mess right now.

You Tube updates were not working for me either at first, but after the late night PSN maintenance the other night it seems to work fine. You should try it again.

I'm happy to say that the graphics were really not that bad. Maybe it lowered game detail to 720p at worst. The real issue was the lag. It created probably between 1/2 or 1/4 of a second of controller lag, which was just enough to make the early sections of Towerfall still playable. The later sections of just about any game would be nearly impossible, though.

But a lot of the issue likely had to do with my internet speed. I get about five down, and one up. And the share play feature only worked when I wasn't hosting. When I did try hosting, the system quickly tested my connection and told me that it wasn't fast enough.

So what about the rest of you? Have you hosted games that responded a bit more favorably, and found things to be a bit more playable?

@spaceinsomniac: I assume this is the same technology used for Playstation Now. Have you tried that service, and would you say the experiences are comparable?

I hope the GB crew do some kind of video of this feature, or maybe just dick around with it on Unprofessional Fridays.

@spaceinsomniac: Well I just tried it and I still get a "Cannot Upload" error. I can assure you that my internet is fast enough, and my PS4 is hooked up to the router via cable so dunno whats up.

Has anyone tried Diablo 3 Share Play and had the guest use their own PSN account? I have a save file on my friend's PS4 from before I had one, so we booted up Share Play with D3 on his PS4 on Wednesday, but it only let me use a guest account. Do I need to have the D3 save on my system or in my cloud in order to use my account? Or that just a restriction of share play?

If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably because when you played at your friends house, you used a different account other than theirs to play local multiplayer, right? It works by virtually handing your friend the second controller, which I don't believe allows you to use a different profile.

I never tried PS Now, because I already have enough of a backlog, and because I doubt my internet speed wouldn't be up to the task.

Upload is king on this.

I used my own PSN account at his place since I was getting trophies on my profile. With D3 local MP, you can log in to your own Account, but I guess that's not the case with Share Play. Understandable.