PS4 Brings 15 Minutes of (YouTube) Fame

Sony has confirmed the PlayStation 4 will buffer 15 minutes of footage of your gaming for you to save or share. That’s longer than originally reported and gives the PS4 an (admittedly minor) advantage over the Xbox One.

The buffer works in a similar way to that on television PVRs. At any point you’ll be able to access the last 15 minutes of footage, carry out some basic editing, and post it to a social network using a dedicated “Share” button on the controller.

A Sony exec had originally said the buffer would be “several minutes”, which led to some confused reports that the duration would be seven minutes. Sony has now confirmed the 15 minute period, which compares with five minutes for the Xbox One.

The extra time could be useful depending on the game type. For example, 15 minutes might be long enough to record an entire bout in a fighting game, or to put together a demo of completing a mission, where five minutes wasn’t enough. It also gives you more chance of being able to capture a specific moment of footage if you are so engrossed in the game that you don’t do so right away.

The Xbox version of the feature does have some extra benefits though. It will let you capture the last 30 seconds of footage through a voice command without having to pause the game, something that’s going to be handy for online players.

Also, when you come to edit the five minutes from the buffer, you’ll be able to add a voiceover and even overlay footage from the Kinect camera.

Both console’s buffer features are likely to vastly increase the number of gameplay videos on YouTube and social networks. Whether that’s a good thing is of course highly debatable.

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