Share Play enables a PlayStation Plus subscriber to share a game with a friend, allowing that friend to take control of the game remotely and play - without having to own the title themselves.

But the feature will not be limitless. Sony has confirmed to Gamespot that sessions will be restricted to 60-minute sessions. There are no limit to how many Share Play sessions you host, Sony told the site. But it's unclear if this means that players will simply be able to host multiple Share Play sessions in a row.

In a chat with GameBlog, PlayStation Europe boss Jim Ryan was reluctant to divulge the full details. "In principle it is 60 minutes, that's all I can say for now," he said.

Ryan also clarified that players who take control of a game remotely will be able to play both the single and multi player modes in that game - even without PS Plus membership - but they will not be able to play multiplayer with the person they are sharing from without a PS Plus membership.

Speaking to Famitsu, translated via Kotaku, SCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida revealed how a Share Play session will be started.

"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 said.

"You could call it a mini PlayStation Now," he added, comparing it to the cloud gaming service, with the host's PS4 acting as the cloud.

When sharing a game with a friend, since your PS4 is essentially being played by that person remotely, you will not be able to play the PS4 yourself without disrupting the Share Play session, Sony has clarified.

In addition, since the person the game is being shared to is basically playing their friend's PS4, they themselves cannot save their progress to their own account.

"In Share Play, the visitor (the one who doesn't own the game) takes over the host (the one who owns the game)'s account, so the visitor cannot save their play data onto their own account," a Sony rep told Kotaku.

Sony confirmed confirmed during its Gamescom press conference on Tuesday that the long-awaited Share Play feature will be introduced to PS4 as part of the upcoming firmware update 2.0, due for release by Autumn.

The anticipated feature was first announced during the PS4 unveiling in February 2013, but missed the PS4 launch and was yet to surface on the console.

Posted: Aug 14, 2014 5:49 pm
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/474427/ps4-share-play-restricted-to-60-minute-sessions/