SharePlay aka Game Sharing on PS4

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"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.

SCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida offered up some additional details on how Share Play will work in an interview with Famitsu (as translated by Kotaku). Comparing it to Sony's new PlayStation Now streaming service, he said, "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."

He didn't specify how much time could pass between these steps; it's possible the owner will need to be at his or her console to grant access at the same time as when someone wants to play a game. What it means for sure is that the person doing the sharing will be unable to use their system while someone else is remotely playing a game on it.

Some of this certainly dampens the enthusiasm I had for Share Play, but it's not all bad news. Yoshida said the feature works with all PS4 games without any effort on the part of developers. Additionally, save games are tied to the player's account, allowing you to try a friend's game, buy it, and then pick up from where you left off.

The 2.0 update that introduces Share Play--along with the ability to upload saved videos to YouTube and search for PSN users by their real name, among other things--is coming sometime this fall.

With the SharePlay feature being limited to a max of 1 hour and you can't use your own PS4 while someone else is remote playing it, the best feature of SharePlay to me would be to let a friend try out a game to see if they're interested in buying it as a kind of demo. Or if you are in an annoying point in a game that you just can't beat, you can let a friend try to beat that area for you.

Sources: Kotaku & Gamespot

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I tested Share Play tonight on the PS4 with my brother. The results are interesting.

 

First off, you make a party. You then click on the share play icon. One person selects to be the host and the other has to connect as a guest. You have to have a decent upload speed. My brother and I both have 5 mbps up and he got an error at first saying the speed was too slow to connect. But after a couple attempts he was able to connect to my PS4. As the host I saw no change on my screen. I loaded up Destiny and he saw everything I saw as if I was streaming. At any point during the game I could give him control by clicking on the Playstation button, going to the party, click on his name and select the option to hand the controller to him. And just like that he was playing my game and I had no controller input. I made sure to tell him not to go into my inventory because if he destroyed by ice breaker for weapon parts I'd kill him. lol. His aim was all over the place and he was complaining about the sensitivity. Everything looked fine to me tho. And Destiny glitched like a bastard for him but that might have been related to the latest Destiny patch.

 

Destiny does not have a local co-op so we weren't able to play it together. Something like Little Big Planet or Call of Duty with a split screen 2 player option should work fine though.

 

The share play connection was limited to 1 hour. We tested this by having him disconnect at around the 10 minutes remaining mark and when he joined back it had the time left at around 9:50 or so.. We figured out the time limit is on the host. So I turned off shareplay, turned it back on and had him reconnect and just like that the 1 hour was completely reset without having to turn any game off.

 

Next I tried connecting to his PS4. Once I connected to his share play, I noticed something that he was talking about.. I saw a generic Playstation screen saying that the host was not in a game and I had to wait. Once he loaded up Killzone I saw it loading on my screen. The graphics took a noticeable hit to me. I've seen clips of Killzone that look great, but I was experiencing almost a Netflix low quality kind of issue. After a while it started clearing up but it never looked crisp. It might have been an issue with our connection or his upload speed. He didn't have the co-op dlc so we couldn't try it at the same time, so I gave me the controller and my god I noticed the lag immediately. It was the same kind of issue I experienced while Streaming Borderlands over Steam on my own network, except much worse. The lag over my own network was still playable. But the input lag I experienced trying to play Killzone on his PS4 felt like a full 1/4 to half a second. For a FPS game it makes it almost unplayable to my because of the accuracy issue. It wasn't that Destiny had too much sensitivity for my brother, it was that he was getting lag also because my shooting on Killzone was just like him on Destiny.. we both kept over shooting and over aiming the target.

 

I think Share Play will work good for games that don't require very fast input responses and have a low frame rate.. Something like a FPS game would not be good for this.