ThePlayStation 5’srelease brought with it a number of significant upgrades to the PlayStation experience. Loading times are faster, visuals are vastly improved, andthe DualSense controller features immersive haptic feedbackand more. There’s also the Activities feature, which boils down some of the console’s biggest games into a series of checklists and allows players to teleport to objectives, look at how long a task will take, and be notified of how far into a current quest they are.
The feature has been one of Sony’s biggest marketing points, and as it turns out there are several reasons why the company thought to integrate them. An alleged document provided to only a select number of developers in 2019 was revealed by Patrick Klepek in an article from VICE Gaming today, with the file focusing on thePlayStation 5’s Activities feature.
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Within the document was a presentation detailing whyActivity Cardswere added, with the main reason being Sony wanted to offer consumers streamlined access to single-player games. According to VICE, the idea stemmed from several surveys Sony collected surrounding the issues players found with playing single-player games regularly, listing four overall concerns mentioned frequently during its research.
For one, players didn’t know how long certain missions would take to complete, so they only played when they knew they had time. Many also claimed that when they got stuck, searching through walkthrough videos was tedious. Surveys also reported that fans hated how they couldn’t talk about a game with friends without the risk of spoilers, and that it was hard to get back into asingle-player experienceonce they had stopped playing for a while.
Sonysupposedly found that, “People don’t have enough information to determine when and how they should play a single-player game.” As a solution, the Activities tab was born, allowing busier players to jump into a single-player game in segments rather than having to sink hours into a title to make any headway. Now, when players boot up their PlayStation 5, they can instantly launch a mission inSpider-Man: Miles Moraleswith a rough understanding of how long it will take to complete.
Although some have accused the feature of refining games too much and taking the wonder of discovery out of titles likeMiles Morales,Sony has made it easier for busy gamers to play for a few minutes when they can. It will be interesting to see how the feature develops as this new console generation presses on.
