DualShock 4 - Share Button

Of all of the new additions to the PlayStation 4, the Share button is perhaps the most important. The single input will allow you to instantly upload screenshots and videos from your favourite games – but much like the current PlayStation Vita, there will be restrictions attached to when you can use the functionality.

“There will be parts of a game that the maker does not want people to be able to see,” Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida told Japanese publication 4Gamer.net. “For example, on Vita, developers can in certain scenes disable the feature that lets users take a screenshot, and [the Share button] will have a similar mechanism. The creator may not want to make video of the final boss sharable, for instance.”

Obviously the limitation is designed to lock down on spoilers, but it’s been used for more nefarious means in some Vita games. Resistance: Burning Skies, for example, restricted any screenshots from being taken at all, presumably because its visuals weren’t up to scratch. Let’s just hope that PS4 developers aren’t overly stingy about what we can share, otherwise this could stifle a potentially great feature.

[source 4gamer.net, via edge-online.com]