Firmware 2.0 feature Share Play has turned out to be entirely optional, as Advanced Warfare and Ghosts both prevent you using it.
The PlayStation 4’s Share Play feature allows you to let another PS Plus subscriber, that doesn’t own the game, play your copy for 60 minutes online. But what wasn’t obvious until now is that it’s entirely optional on the part of the game maker as to whether it works or not.
Many games already prevent certain sections of a single-player game from using Share Play, to prevent the spread of spoilers, but Call Of Duty Ghosts and Advanced Warfare block out the entire game.
Share Play was only added with the recent 2.0 firmware update, and Activision’s response to the situation is that it hasn’t had time to test the feature yet. Whether or not that’s just PR spin the following statement clearly implies that they may start using it in the future:
‘We’re focused on launching Advanced Warfare and ensuring that people have a great time playing it, which our fans seem to be. Share Play is a new feature that was introduced as part of the recent PS4 firmware 2.00 update.
‘Our engineers didn’t have access to it before it launched, so we haven’t had a chance to evaluate it to see how it will impact the experience across all modes of play. Of course we wouldn’t include a feature in our game without having the chance to test it. Once we’ve fully analysed its performance, we’ll determine how to support it going forward.’
Although obviously Sony will support it with their own games it’ll be interesting to see what stance other publishers take, so if you notice the feature either working on not working with particular games do let us know via email or the comments below.