PS4 Play As You Download "makes a digital library a practical option in the real world"

PlayStation 4 has a digital library that lets you play your games anywhere, Sony has revealed.

Speaking during a presentation at the Develop Conference in Brighton (and reported on by Official PlayStation Magazine), Neil Brown, team leader at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's R&D department, discussed how you'll be able to download and play your PS4 games on other PS4s.

"You can visit your friend's house, you can log into your account and play any game from your digital library, which is good," he said.

"But how useful is that if it takes half a day to download the game you want to play?" Brown asked, before explaining that PS4's Play As You Download feature means if you do access your digital library on other PS4s, you'll be able to play your games quicker than ever.

"With Play As You Download you get much quicker access to at least the first section of the game so you can start playing quicker. So this makes a digital library a practical option in the real world."

One example of this is with Killzone: Shadow Fall, which is playable after downloading just the first level and the game's menu. You'll be able to choose whether you want to download its multiplayer mode first or the single-player, and get playing as it's downloading in the background.

This feature works with Blu-ray discs, too, Brown explained, where "chunks" are automatically copied to the hard drive in the background.

"This means that after the first few minutes your game can rely on having faster read speeds from the hard drive, which provides a better experience for players. This is a completely background process for the player. They don't have to wait for anything to install before playing the game. The game will launch as soon as the disk has been put in the drive."