At Sony’s February press conference, it was revealed that the PlayStation 4’s network would support the option to play a new game as it was downloaded. Obviously, this meant that we’d finally be rid of the stalling and delay inherent in digital titles, but we’d yet to find out how practical the functionality would be.
A recent developer diary from Guerilla, developer of the Killzone franchise, came with an explanation of Shadow Fall ’s take on download-play. Technical director Michiel van der Leeuw explained that “You’re going to download a chunk of the game, get the menu and first level, and while you’re playing the first level we can start downloading the second in the background.” Derivatively, the same would hold true for the remaining portion of the game, eliminating download latency from the playthrough entirely after the initial portion is downloaded.
This bodes well for the PS4’s Gaikai-strengthened network, but leaves several questions surrounding download-play. For example: How would an open-ended RPG play out? Would the game download the world from its starting point, and reveal later levels as it downloaded, or would open-world games not support download-play at all?
Source: Eurogamer