You can thank Sony Santa Monica for the PS4 Share button

It was pitched with a PowerPoint and everything!

One of the big new features for the latest iteration of the DualShock controller is its Share button. It will allow users to, for instance, broadcast footage of the game they’re playing with minimal effort and represents a “huge focus” for the PlayStation 4, according to Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida.

Chatting with Edge, Yoshida gave background information about who, exactly, brainstormed the concept. “I think it was [creative director] Nathan Gary in Santa Monica Studios who suggested it: how about adding a dedicated button on the controller so that everybody can just press that button to share? He was helping out the external development, heavily involved in helping the development of Journey and Unfinished Swan at Santa Monica Studios.

“So Nathan put together a PowerPoint and pitched in this Share button idea. And we all went, ‘That’s a brilliant idea!’ So it was a pretty quick decision after he suggested it and I’m sure he’s pretty proud of his contribution,” continued Yoshida. “That was after many months of discussion of how people should be using the PS4 system and sharing was one of the central experiences we wanted to include in the system’s development.”

Can’t say I’ve made up my mind on the Share button or Sony’s push for social integration more generally. It’s just one of those things, particularly the former, that should be inoffensive at worst. I’m open to falling in love with the feature, but I don’t realistically see that happening. At least not until we, you know, get our hands on the darned console already.

PS4′s Share button was Sony Santa Monica’s idea [Edge]