The PS5's instant loading feature, now apparently called Activities, has been discussed in a now-deleted article for an upcoming racing game. In a Gamereactor preview for WRC 9, we got what appears to be a more detailed explanation (and seemingly the official name) of the PS5's ability to instantly load players into certain parts of the games they own.
Activities, according to a captured snippet of the article, provides "an instant deeplink to specific races directly from the console's menu" for this particular PS5 game.
Gematsu archived the article and tweeted the relevant paragraph:
Gamereactor preview article for WRC 9 mentioned an unannounced #PS5 feature. Article was here but was taken offline: https://t.co/BIKFZEAhnLArchive: https://t.co/zVtjk94ux0 pic.twitter.com/5VdNwyEPpQJuly 28, 2020
This isn't the first time Sony has used the word 'activities' to describe the notion of instantly loading into part of a game on PS5, though it was previously mentioned in passing.
Back in one of last year's Wired reveal articles around the PS5 hardware (as pointed out by Eurogamer), Sony's chief architect Mark Cerny said the following. "Even though it will be fairly fast to boot games, we don't want the player to have to boot the game, see what's up, boot the game, see what's up," Cerny said.
"Multiplayer game servers will provide the console with the set of joinable activities in real time. Single-player games will provide information like what missions you could do and what rewards you might receive for completing them – and all of those choices will be visible in the UI. As a player you just jump right into whatever you like."
The Activities name, then, does appear to be new, though it's unclear in the article whether the developers of WRC 9 or Sony were the source of the title.
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What could this mean for PS5 owners?
Knowing how the feature functions with WRC 9 also offers some further hints of how it might work in other games: jumping into a specific multiplayer mode, for example, or instantly loading into your last save in an open-world game. The idea of having a list of starting points on the PS5's menu screen is pretty cool – and it could vary wildly depending on the game you're playing.
Assuming Activities is its final name, we'd expect to hear much more about this feature before launch, along with the price and release date of the console.
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