"At that time, a lot of players who were uploading game videos were using capture boards through their PCs, and it required a lot of setup."
- PlayStation designer Toshi Aoki on the initial discussion leading up to pitching the share button to Sony.
Before Playstation players were able to capture and share gameplay footage, they needed to go through the long and arduous process of hooking up their console to a PC in order to upload footage.
The PlayStation's DualShock 4 controller changed all of that with the share button.
In an interview with Polygon one of the key designers of the share button, Toshi Aoki, discusses how the feature was initially pitched to Sony. The company had apparently already designed the PS4 with sharing capabilities already in mind, which made the concept of pitching a dedicated button for sharing content easier.
"It obviously was a great idea, that a hardware button is incredibly easy to understand," Aoki notes. "It just matched up. After that, it was easy for me to pitch that up to the executives, because it went along so well with the core PS4 concept.”
Although pitching the idea to Sony was easy enough, the process of actually designing the tech was an entirely different issue. “We’re always concerned about increasing the complexity,” Aoki explains. “The DualShock 3 had a lot of buttons already.”
Be sure to check out the entire piece over at Polygon, which provides more information about how the share button was designed. It's well worth the read.