Developers can disable PlayStation 4's Share button at certain parts of a game

If everyone using a PlayStation 4 can quickly share videos or pictures of key plot twists or boss battle strategies in games, then there may be fewer secrets left for the wider community to cherish.

It may be a relief, then, to hear that Sony will allow developers to temporarily disable the Share button at different parts of their games.

"There will be parts of a game that the maker does not want people to be able to see," said Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, speaking to Japanese site 4Gamer, translated by Edge.

"For example, on Vita, developers can in certain scenes disable the feature that lets users take a screenshot, and [the Share function] will have a similar mechanism. The creator may not want to make video of the final boss shareable, for instance."

The Share button is on the DualShock 4 controller, and was touted by Sony as an integral part of PlayStation 4. The console, using Gaikai technology, always records what you do, so when you do something unexpectedly amazing, you can go back, see and share a recording of it.

It's one of the touches Shuhei Yoshida hopes will give PlayStation 4 the edge over the next Xbox in the third-party game war - which platform you buy the game. Being very different these days, when console exclusives are much rarer, isn't the best way to go about things, he acknowledged.

Instead, being easy to develop for, having a good controller, having a high amount of RAM, being able to instantly stream demos and do tasks in the background so that you can quickly play games and switch applications - it's things like that which could make all the difference. Not to mention enabling second-hand games to be played and having a relaxed approach to online forms of DRM.