PS5’s Game Sharing Will Seemingly Work the Same as PS4

Cross-gen voice chat and messaging could also be on the way.

Posted By Shubhankar Parijat | On 30th, Sep. 2020 Under News, Rumors

Though Sony have spoken plenty about the PS5’s hardware and its launch lineup, they haven’t revealed a whole lot on what the console’s user experience is going to be like. Those details are supposedly coming soon, but before they do, it seems a new leak has spilled the beans on them, revealing some interesting details.

A datamine of the web-based PlayStation Store (via Reddit) has seen some error prompts and messages popping up, which, interestingly enough, have gives some clues as to how various PS5 features could work. One such feature is game sharing.

Currently, on PS4, if you set a PSN account as the primary account on your console, any and all other accounts on that console are also able to access all subscriptions and purchases on the primary account automatically. It’s probably one of the best game sharing solutions out there right now- and thankfully, it looks like Sony are going to stick with it for the PS5.

That’s according to this prompt, which is one of several aforementioned messages mined from the PlayStation Store: “If the “Console Sharing and Offline Play” setting is enabled for your PS5, players aged 18+ who aren’t PS Now subscribers will be able to play PS Now games from the game’s shortcut icon (displayed on the PS5 home screen) as well as in the PS Now app.”

Additionally, one message in particular also contains references to voice chats and messaging across generations. “Message and voice chat with friends across PS4, PS5 and PlayStation App,” the message reads. As the Reddit post points out, it’s unclear whether this is referring to a system-level feature only, or if it will apply to games as well- though if it’s the former, one would imagine that the latter would also be possible, depending on whether the games in question allow cross-gen multiplayer.

This isn’t information coming officially from Sony, so don’t take it as such just yet. Hopefully, official details on the PS5’s UX will be revealed soon. Until then, stay tuned for more updates.