The PS5 has not yet revealed all its secrets. One of them could be the activities feature, which would allow you to join a game instantly without even launching the game. A way to strengthen the community aspect of the machine.
To join a friend's game on PS4, you have to follow a very specific process: launch the game, wait for it to load, join the game, wait for it to load again and then only, it is possible to play. This could be ancient history with the Playstation 5 thanks to the Activities feature, which would allow you to start a game without starting the game.
The functionality exists. Mark Cerny had evoked it at the turn of a sentence by presenting the PS5, but since then, no more news … until today. The GameReactor website has indeed published a preview of the rally game WRC9. This article states that the Activities feature would allow you to join a race instantly.
The article was immediately deleted, but of course it was already too late. The Japanese Twitter account Gematsu, always well informed, gives us the quote of the article evoking the functionality. Daniel Ahmad, a well-known analyst at Nyko Partner who has his entry into the entire industry, is pushing the nail on the head by saying that we should hear about Activities very soon.
This is something we should start hearing more about soon.
Deep level integration between the PS5 OS and Games to improve the overall experience for users. https://t.co/4pKre8nwy2
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) July 28, 2020
Bye bye the loads
In practical terms, the Activities app would save us a lot of time. Let's say the player turns on his console and arrives on the OS's main menu. He then sees that one of his friends is playing WRC9. All he has to do is click a button to join the game, without any loading time. The OS will only start the data it needs for this particular section, thanks to the speed of the SSD. One can imagine that the game starts in full in the background afterwards.
Sony is expected to tell us more later in August. If the manufacturer announced its PS5 games in June 2020, the console still has a lot to show us. One thinks of course its OS, which will be entirely new compared to that of the PS4. Similarly, it has still not revealed its two best-kept secrets: its price and its release date.
In any case, the PS5 should focus on speed and Sony intends to make it a major marketing argument. This has already begun, since the firm has proudly announced the end of loading times on its machine.