Alone

There’s a big thing I often think about: In the upcoming months the PS4 in our house will be alone. It’s going to be a nice machine, have awesome ability to have us game wonderfully into the next generation of games.

Alone is a big thing. Some games are single games, but so many are multiplayer online and if more than one person in the house likes the same games, that poses the question of: Can I Co-op locally?

Local Co-op

Killzone: Shadowfall is one game we want Co-op locally on. It’s not going to happen unless they release DLC or an update to allow it, and I’m not holding my breathe.

We have 3 PS3’s. Only 1 PS4 is scheduled to be purchased this year. I don’t know if we’ll buy another next year. I know I’ll be happy enough to buy games on disc and only have to buy 1 copy of said game. Multiple devices needing or wanting a game can become quite pricey.

In my house two of us wanted The Last of Us in June. That’s $100 in discs. I mostly don’t buy digital games that. I want the case(s) for one thing, and just love how putting discs in feels, and frankly disc games have more value than that since I can sell it to someone else if I don’t want it anymore.

Digital Content

I have a lot of digital content for my PS3. Older stuff I can put on all three of our PS3’s, but most stuff we’d prefer to do that for, we can’t. The rules changed in November 2012 to allow most digital content to be put on 2 devices. That’s one reason to buy digital vs. disc, when the software is able to be used by two different consoles and PSN ID’s at the same time. (That’s not always the case, so when one buys digital games they should ALWAYS read everything in the description, to be sure.)

PS + is about Digital all the way. Game saves are digital whether or not it’s a digital game. Cloud Storage for Game Data is awesome. On the PS3 it’s something I’ve enjoyed, allowing me to go anywhere on any PS3 easily. On the PS4 that will work, and it’ll be more than that. I’ll be able to log onto another PS4 anywhere and download ANY of my PS4 Digital content.

That’s where it’s sticky though. I know how the PS3 licence for digital stuff goes. I can only use PS+ on one PS3 to auto-update and all the benefits of PS+, so it’s similar to the idea of PRIMARY PS4 for PS Plus being one machine. But how it is on PS3 right now is I can put my content on TWO PS3’s permanently. On PS4 it sounds like there is no second permanent, but that’s not entirely a sure thing. Maybe we can do that, maybe not.

Multiple PS4 Consoles

If we had 2 PS4’s I would have PS+ and another family member would have PS+ –both machines would be covered. If I bought a game (not a PS Plus free game) could I put it on both machines or only on 1 and temporarily put it on another. But how that works seems silly … if we wanted to both play that game at the same time, like an online co-op or multiplayer … then we’d have to flip-flop which machine we’d play on. My content couldn’t sit on the second PS4 permanently. It’d just be a temporary situation, and I’d HAVE to play on that machine for that game session. Seems too unfriendly to families.

Easiest thing would be to buy the games digitally twice. Me and them. Sigh. Back to the discs we’d go.