"How long will it take me to download this game?"
While GTA V proved to be a worthy title of its own right, downloading the game via PSN was a bit of a chore to say the least. In a recent interview, Sony Computer Entertainment UK boss Fergal Gara spoke about some things we can look forward to with online functionality with the PS4.
Fergal mentioned that Killzone: Shadow Fall will be 50GB which is pretty friggin' big. He did mention though that Sony is making some big improvements with their online hub along with bringing some cool innovations like "Play as You Download" functionality that means what it says. Play as you download.
Here is part of the interview:
We saw with the recent release of Grand Theft Auto 5 that lots of people like to download their games rather than buy discs from shops. PlayStation Network, which was designed nearly 10 years ago, struggled with the demand and download speeds were very slow. For PS4, are you confident people will be able to download these huge games en masse from your servers and install them without technical problems?
Fergal Gara: First of all, it is definitely going to grow as a means of consumption. And there are big innovations in the PS4 to make it more attractive and more easy gamer wise to want to download. The Play as you Download functionality, for example, means you don't need the whole file before you go. This is a little bit counterbalanced by the fact the files themselves are getting bloody big. Killzone: Shadow Fall is an uber file - I think it's cracking on for 50GB. It looks it, too, when you see it.
It is still a relatively tedious process. We've done a lot of work on pre-delivering files. It's not perfect. It's not seamless. The file version of the game versus the disc version of the game maybe needs to go through additional QA and additional testing. Some of the problems that have occurred have occurred on older machines, which of course when you go into the next-generation you at least get to reset and start again and everything's the same age and new. That helps.
But it's a major area of focus. It's a major area of investment. The network will perform better on multiple levels, because it becomes not just a sales or gaming delivery but increasingly it becomes a social network. So it's got to be a compelling experience on multiple levels. It's going to be for no lack of investment, for no lack of effort and no lack of intention that things might fall a bit short. But we're definitely moving in the right direction, and I'm confident when step on and understand its importance.
Source: Eurogamer
