After disappointing news broke yesterday that in order to record and share gameplay on Microsoft's Xbox One, a Xbox Live Gold account would be needed, fans were curious if Sony had a similar policy in place for recording and sharing gameplay on its upcoming next-gen PlayStation 4.
Fans flocked to the Twitter account of Sony's president of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, who confirmed over and over that no PlayStation Plus account would be needed in order record, post, share, or stream gameplay on the console.
We found out yesterday courtesy of an Xbox Live features page on Xbox.com that recording and sharing gameplay on the Xbox One would only be available to players who had a Gold account. Likewise for the console's other features, such as SmartMatch, NFL on Xbox, Skype, etc.
This is just one more feature that is rapidly separating Microsoft and Sony in the next-gen console war. Prior to this, it seemed as though the main differences between recording and sharing gameplay on the two consoles were quite subtle.
Sony's PlayStation 4 will be able to record 15 minutes of gameplay in the background that players will be able to capture, and publish online (provided that last no-scope headshot was as pretty as you think it was). CVG reports the news came from an official spokesperson from Sony. The footage can be brought up via the DualShock 4 controller's "Share" button, and will allow players to do some basic editing and cropping to pretty up the footage for their Facebook page.
On the flip side, Microsoft's Xbox One will also be able to record gameplay for gamers to share. However, the primary difference between Microsoft and Sony's new consoles is that Microsoft's will only be able to record five minutes of gameplay, but still allows for sharing over social networks and Xbox Live. Creative Director Kenn Lobb described the creatively named "Project Upload" to GameSpot during Comic-Con, saying, "The idea is that you're always recording. We have a ring buffer game DVR basically, so the last five minutes of any game you're playing is always being stored locally on your hard drive." he said. Like most other features, gamers can control the feature with voice commands via the One's new Kinect.
This latest news definitely helps give Sony the edge over Microsoft; much like was the case when both systems were officially revealed. However, when faced with a great deal of backlash over its always online, DRM, and used game policy, Microsoft changed its mind in an attempt to curry public favor. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will change its policy one again with regard to this feature as well.