Xbox One vs Playstation 4 – The Constant Battle

We can thank all the online social networks for making the concept of sharing a way of life. We’ve gone from sharing our thoughts, images, and videos online, to sharing our homes and vehicles in real life, with services like Airbnb Inc. and Uber Inc. Early next week, Sony Corp. will contribute to the culture of sharing with its exciting new Share Play feature for the PS4. Video game consoles have been capable of sharing content to social networks for some time. Both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 featured games that could upload gameplay screen shots and videos to Facebook and YouTube. Sony’s Share Play, which goes live on October 28th with the PS4 Masamune software update, goes well beyond simply sharing static content.

Share Play harkens back to a time when people played video games together in one room for hours at a time, passing the controller back and forth, taking turns to complete impossibly difficult games. It modernizes that experience by moving it online. An individual with a PS4 will be able to invite friends to join a game, even if the friend doesn’t have the game. All the friend needs is a PS4 and an internet connection. If you have all the latest and greatest games, and your friend has no games at all, you can invite your buddy to mooch off of you, and you’ll both be able to enjoy the gaming experience at no extra cost.

Co-op and versus games immediately come to mind, as Share Play will allow friends to go head to head, or work together, with a single copy of a video game. Single player games are also Share Play capable. Just like in the old days, when you could pass the controller to a friend who had a slightly faster trigger finger to help you finish off a difficult boss, you can use Share Play to ask for assistance from friends. You’ll essentially be handing over the control of the game to a friend, and you’ll watch them in action. Share Play has the potential to drastically increase the amount of time friends play video games together, as it will no longer be necessary to figure out which of your friends has the same games that you do.

Revived market opportunities

Based on everything Sony has published about Share Play, it seems to be a universal PS4 feature that will work on every game. It’s unclear if game publishers are concerned about the potential loss of revenue, now that friends won’t need to buy their own copies of games. Share Play will limit the amount of time a friend can play to one hour, but Sony hasn’t specified if that’s a daily limit, or simply a limit to continuous playing. This feature should help Sony maintain its advantage over Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox One console.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft originally planned to offer similar functionality. The Xbox One vision of game sharing allowed for individuals to share video game title’s with friends, who could then play it on their own, without the need to play together, and with no time limits. User backlash based on DRM concerns caused Microsoft to scrap their game share plans. They may need to revisit those ideas, if they want to be able to compete with the PS4.