The PS5 has been a great console since its debut in late 2020, but to say that's solely due to the number of high-quality exclusives available on Sony's flagship console would actually be a disservice. The PS5 is packed with great games, sure, but it also has a handful of brilliant features to boost your time with any game.
Whether it's the activity cards that draw your attention to certain elements of a game, its trophies, or the DualSense wireless controller's phenomenal haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, the PS5 has generally distinguished itself as a high-end gaming experience. well worth its price (and the investment of time required to track down the actions of the elusive console).
But there's one feature in particular that has added exponentially to my enjoyment of certain games lately, and it's a feature that I honestly had no idea was an arrow in the PS5's quiver until very recently. This feature is screen sharing.
Admittedly, the PS5 split-screen concept isn't something that sounds particularly innovative, and it wouldn't necessarily turn heads if Sony itself paid more attention to it. But what I found from using PS5 screen sharing is that it can turn even single-player games into a more social experience.
progress together
I'll give you the first great example that really sold me on PS5 screen sharing, and it came shortly after the release of Gran Turismo 7. That game itself has some features that work much better than they seem, like its excellent motion controls. Dual Sense. But while a friend and I were making our way through the absolutely brutal license center, aiming to earn gold with every challenge, he suggested we try loading up screen sharing so we can keep an eye on everyone's progress.
Using PS5 Screen Sharing's "Picture-in-Picture" mode, which overlays a small window displaying my friend's screen on top of mine, we were both able to work our way through the GT7 License Center challenges while checking in on each other. . Going up. The result was a truly innovative experience that made us both laugh at each other's failed attempts, while inspiring us to shave precious milliseconds off our best times.
And that's where it hit me. What the PS5's split-screen feature effectively accomplished was turning what is normally a single-player game mode into something akin to a multiplayer experience. Of course, we weren't directly interacting with other people's games; we weren't racing on the same track in the same multiplayer session. But we were actively participating in each other's gaming sessions through this shared visualization.
It's like a live broadcast, but...
Of course, the concept of watching someone else's game online is certainly not new. Live streaming sites like Twitch and YouTube Gaming have been around for over a decade, where potentially thousands of viewers can tune into a single streamer and create a unique social environment that's hard to replicate elsewhere.
However, PS5 screen sharing isn't exactly that. It's something that I found a little more intimate and therefore much more interactive. That's because the viewing experience is not a one-way street. Or at least it doesn't have to be. While you can watch a friend's game by zooming in from split screen to full screen, it's the amazing picture-in-picture mode that allowed us to play and watch at the same time.
That's not to say that the experience was completely perfect. Video quality fluctuated quite frequently over a Wi-Fi connection, and sometimes the screen sharing feature would randomly close completely, forcing us both to set up screen sharing from scratch. Thankfully, the setup process couldn't be easier, but it was frustrating that you sometimes had to restart screen sharing every time it decided it didn't want to work anymore.
Sharing the PS5 screen is also not without limits. You can only share your screen if you are inside the game and outside of content that prevents the use of the tool (such as a cutscene or terms and conditions pages). It's unfortunate, but naturally you can't use PS5 screen sharing for apps like Netflix, Disney Plus, YouTube, or other streaming services that host subscription content.
A whole new way to play?
In the end, I walked away from my time with PS5 screen sharing thinking it's a really cool feature on Sony's flagship console, but only because there's a chance we'll use it elsewhere in a way that wasn't necessarily intended. .
This may very well be a quirk of the feature that my friend and I were able to stream to our screens simultaneously. But in doing so, we turned an often frustrating and frustrating segment of GT7 into something that entertained us for hours.
I'd love to try PS5 screen sharing for a variety of different games, just to see how it affects my approach to playing them. Whether it's challenging a friend to climb the endless tower in the new Returnal update or competing to be the first to complete certain combo missions in The King of Fighters 15.
It's definitely a feature I'll be telling more of my friends about, and maybe even manages to breathe new life into games we haven't played on our PS5s in a while.
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