Sony and the PlayStation Network platform have been pushing Day 1 digital sales for some time now, but PlayStation 4 owners will soon be allowed to pre-load games they preorder digitally, not unlike Valve's Steam service.
Writing on the PlayStation Blog, Chieh Chen explains "Automatic pre-load on PS4 allows you to download pre-ordered games before the release date, so you can get into your games after they're released faster than ever. We all know that some of the biggest games can take a while to download, and with the pre-load functionality, you'll be able to download and install those huge files up to several days in advance."
Players began pre-loading digital downloads of Grand Theft Auto V on PlayStation 3 and doing so actually led to a few leaks ahead of launch, but PlayStation 4 has been designed from the ground-up to account for our interconnected world. Does that make pre-loading more secure for publishers?
Regardless, with ballooning file sizes it'd be impossible to play the game you want on the day of release without pre-loading. Pre-loading is also available on PS3 if you haven't upgraded to Sony's next-generation console. For more, check out the PlayStation Store on your device.