Up until now I don’t doubt that the Xbox ecosystem has been much better than Sony’s Playstation set up when it comes to parental controls for kids using their own profiles. This is however about to change quite dramatically, you can read the full details of this change and all the others, in the following PS blog:
Play Time Management
We’re introducing Play Time Management, which will allow family managers (and adult family members who are set as guardians) to manage PS4 playtime for child family members on family on PSN. Managing Playtime is easy; go to Settings > Family Management on your PS4, or log into your PlayStation account on your web browser from your PC or smartphone, to check and manage your child’s playtime each day. If needed, the family manager/guardians can apply playtime restrictions to make sure that the child is only playing for a set amount of time or within set playable hours. Notifications on PS4 will be sent to the child during gameplay so that he or she knows when they should save and quit. The family managers/guardians also have the option to add extra game time via their smartphone or PC. In addition, the family manager/guardians can choose whether or not to automatically log the child out of their PS4 once their playtime is over.
This is big news for parents, and finally lets us exercise the sort of control over access without it coming down to a fight every single time.
Heck, my most sure fire way of ensuring my eldest gets ready for bed usually involves me messaging him on the PS4 via the Playstation app on my phone, so the addition of another weapon to my arsenal that he can’t actually completely ignore is only a good thing.
The PS4 already has some good age related restrictions but being able to set time limits per day is a real killer function, even though I can see it leading to some tears and arguments. It’s a heck of a lot better than stealing the controllers and hiding them somewhere (and forgetting where you put them)!
MS already have a family timer on the Xbox One, so now I just have to decide the split between the two for the kids…