Will this work?:-
I buy 2 PS4's - 1 for Son, 1 for Dad/Family.
I have 2 rooms - 1 Son's Bedroom, 1 Dad/Family Game Room.
Put 1 PS4 in Son's Bedroom. Put 1 PS4 in Dad/Family Game Room.
Have 1 Main 'BUYING' Account - SonnyBoy.
Have 3 Additional User Accounts - BigDaddy, SexyWifee, LittleSweetiePie.
Dad/Family Room (x1 PS4)
= 1 Main 'BUYING' Account 'SonnyBoy' User Account
= BigDaddy User Account
= SexyWifee User Account
= LittleSweetiePie User Account
= Buy PS+ and all digital games via 'SonnyBoy' ONLY onto THIS PS4.
= BigDaddy, SexyWifee, LittleSweetiePie play all games on THIS PS4, including online.
= Assuming if playing online, it will be under SonnyBoy 'with' an attached 'sub-name', such as 'SonnyBoy:BigDaddy'.
= Assuming you can play online under 'SonnyBoy:BigDaddy' whilst 'SonnyBoy' was playing online at the same time on ANY other PS4.
Son Bedroom (x1 PS4)
= SonnyBoy User Account.
= Download all digital games originally downloaded via PS4 in Dad/Family Room and play. Also use PS+ account as original purchaser as normal 'SonnyBoy', with no attached 'sub-name'.
= Plays online on this PS4 or ANY other PS4 (he goes round to his friends who has a PS4 and wants to show him a new game he's just bought, for example) he decides to play on which will include ALL games originally bought & PS+ under the 'BUYING' Account, SonnyBoy, which is in the Dad/Family Room.
= DOWNSIDE to this is that SonnyBoy cannot create other User Accounts (perhaps for friends) on his PS4 (Son Bedroom) and have them share his games & ps+ usage. They would ONLY be able to do this on the 'BUYING' Account, which is in the Dad/Family Room. In other words, it aint happening lol!
^ This final point seems to be the main reason why Sony have changed the way they are doing the share account. Sony will make more money.
- It makes it harder for randoms/friends to share games (who is gonna be the 'Buying' Account?) whilst still allowing 'a pain in the arse' part-workaround for families, including only x1 ps+ account potentially.
- It offers an advantage in that whoever is the 'BUYING' account, they can go anywhere and play their digital games including online and saving progress (yes I know we could do this in the past with memory cards, ps+ cloud save).
- It's no good if I (Dad) want to go to a friends house and share the games that I've bought (we all know the Dad's are paying for them in the first place) including online play/progress saved unless my Son isn't currently already online but even then, the save progress would be under his account 'SonnyBoy'.
= More copies of games & ps+ will need to be bought.
Personally, if my line of thinking is correct (thanks to all info by everyone input so far), then I'll be kind of grateful if this works. I'm not saying I'm over the moon about it but it at least offers some kind of workaround to only having to buy one digital copy and one ps+.
Of course, it could all be wrong :-(
However, there is no way, I would be buying 2 copies of say, KZSF for my son and I to play together - no chance. At this point, digital would be kissing my arse and a lot of physical games (if I wanted to play with my son) would be put on the back burner until they were on offer. I'm not saying it's not fair to expect if both (son & I) wanted to play the same online multiplayer game together at the same time, then we should both have a copy each - it's just that I feel if I go digital, then this is something which should be offered as an incentive to go digital in the first place. Hopefully, it will be
It's obvious if this is how it's intended then it won't work for everyone.