Sony Computer Entertainment announced at E3 that they were allowing customers to pre-load games several days before the official launch. This would be limited to people who had pre-ordered the game, but it did include 10 titles that were revealed at the convention. The feature will be put to the test with the upcoming Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark; which is due to be launched next week.
Gamers will have to install the PlayStation 4’s 1.70 update in order to get it to work, although this should have happened automatically by now. The pre-loaded titles will also apparently carry timers for people to see how much time remains between their downloading the game and being able to play it.
Digital distribution has had the issue of making gamers wait for games to download before being able to play them, and Sony’s plan to fix this problem raises some interesting questions. For instance, what will happen if the pre-order is cancelled after downloading the game? Most publishers do not allow for refunds on pre-orders, meaning most people will simply keep the game after changing their minds. Although those that do will be in for an interesting circumstance of trying to remove the game from the consoles of people who pre-loaded the game.
The announcement on the PlayStation Blog also mentions that the pre-loading option exists on the PlayStation 3, although there are no titles that allow it yet.
[Source: PlayStation Blog]
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