In an interview with 4Gamer, which was recently translated by Edge, Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Worldwide Studios, talked about many aspects regarding the PlayStation 4, including how the Share function can be restricted by the developers:
There will be parts of a game that the maker does not want people to be able to see. For example, on Vita, developers can in certain scenes disable the feature that lets users take a screenshot, and [the Share function] will have a similar mechanism. The creator may not want to make video of the final boss sharable, for instance.
When it comes to those games themselves, specifically third party published multiplatform titles, Shuhei explained that he wants the PlayStation 4 version to be everyone’s first choice:
In that case, we need to make sure users consider the PS4 version to be the best and the one they want to play. That might mean that the graphics are better, the controller is more comfortable, or the point I mentioned earlier about the console being more user-friendly, like you don’t have to turn the power on and off or you can switch between your game and Netflix at will. Those things will become key.
Taking this concept of the PS4 being the number one choice for multiplatform games, Shuhei mentioned that he’d “like to emphasize ease of use. How the controls feel, how much time you spend waiting around for it to turn on and off, things like that. It’s about giving more consideration to the user experience. On portable smartphones and tablets, you can start playing as soon as you want to and quit whenever you like. PS4 will be a home console that can do that too.”
The ease of use doesn’t just apply to the player though, but developers as well, as he added that “even we [SCE Worldwide Studios] had a hard time developing for PS3 [at first]. But third parties had real trouble developing or porting games, because [the PS3] was so different.” “This time we’re considering how to create a better development environment for third parties from the start.”
What do you think about the restrictions on the Share button? Is it a good idea to help avoid spoilers? Let us know in the comments below.
