A Quick PS4 Initial Setup Question
Hi all,
My google-fu is failing me this week, and I just can't find an answer to this question :?
My family has all chipped in with us to buy my teenage son a PS4 with a few games for Christmas this year. As soon as it arrived I thought to myself "Hey.. I remember what a pita waiting for my XBone to install all the updates was... I should sneak this out of the box for him and get it all ready to roll!" . Then I suddenly realised maybe you need to create a user account etc before you can do those things? He was xbox last gen so doesn't already have a PSN account, and god only knows what name he would want so I can't set that up for him.
Has anyone set up a PS4 lately and could let me know when in the process the updates happen? Can I just plug it in and let it chug away updating? I don't want to take away the fun of "Opening the new thing for the first time" just to find out I can't do it anyway. But I also know he will drive me crazy if he has to spend all day waiting for our lousy internet connection to update the operating system AND Black Ops 3. Because of the price it's the only thing he's getting for Christmas from the whole family so it would really suck if he can't use it on the day!
Oh and for the record...he doesn't really play single player anything other than couch co-op campaigns with me... he only really games at all to play with his friends from school, so leaving it offline and enjoying the campaign for the first day isn't going to fly :P
Thanks for any advice you guys have
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Since he is into playing on-line already most likely he he will have specific wishes for what how his on-line account is to be like I would think it is best to keep away from messing with that. He may even have a PSN account already that is just not linked to any device - that can be on with a browser.
But there is nothing to keep you from setting up the PS4 just using an account of your own and install any updates needed using that account - just don't set the machine to automatically login with that account when powered up or you could go so fas as to delete the account after updating.
Note - for on-line gaming with a PS4 one needs to pay a subscription just like on XBOX, but that should not be needed for installing updates so don't bother with that when doing the update thing (TO OTHER PA READERS! Someone sure of this please confirm.).
That said, yeah, just setup a dummy account to get the system updates. You could even update and install the individual games themselves too, since all the disc games now require an install which could take a good chunk of time. Then there's the updates on top of updates, so if you're going to update the system, don't forget to also update any games he'll get on day 1, too.
So, you need to have +, but not every account does.
If one account has a subscription, all accounts get multiplayer access on the same PS4 . Even those without the +.
You do not need a subscription to get any updates or download games that you bought online.
I will absolutely be updating the games as well if I can... I have had too many spontaneous gaming sessions blighted lately by 900MB patches on the Xbox one. My most played game on the xbox one lately has been the update download screen whilst I watch netflix on the 360 instead :P I know you can leave it on standby but the noise it makes when it's "off" drives my wife nuts.
I will just create a dummy account on the PS4 then and let it grind away. We couldn't afford a year of PS+ but I bought him a month of it. He's been saving his allowance and paper round money up to buy himself a PS4 anyway over the last couple of months so I figure he will have enough to buy a years sub in January... and the month from us will cover him over the Christmas holidays.
One last query though I guess... are the updates on PS4 as frequent as Xbox One? I updated Black Ops 3 today on my xbox... you can pretty much guarantee that I will need to update it again before Christmas day (or more to the point... whenever I choose to play it again when I only have a 20 minute window)... so I guess I should leave these updating hijinks until a few days before Christmas right?
Of course, this will only update the firmware. Games are a different story and require loading from the Internet directly.