PS4 - how best to prepare it for Christmas gift

fmul9798

Hi All,

Apologies if this is much-asked, but I'm hoping it may help others also.
I have a new PS4 which is to be a Christmas gift, but I would rather not have the recipient have to wait hours for it to update on Christmas Day. I also don't want to leave any tracks/PS account info just to get it prepared.
Is there something I can do in advance to get it up to date and as "prepped" as possible and then leave it in what looks like a "factory" state?

Thanks for any help you can provide.
-fm

DopeTech

fmul9798 wrote: »

Hi All,

Apologies if this is much-asked, but I'm hoping it may help others also.
I have a new PS4 which is to be a Christmas gift, but I would rather not have the recipient have to wait hours for it to update on Christmas Day. I also don't want to leave any tracks/PS account info just to get it prepared.
Is there something I can do in advance to get it up to date and as "prepped" as possible and then leave it in what looks like a "factory" state?

Thanks for any help you can provide.
-fm

Its a Christmas gift, leave it in the box and let the recipient update, set it up as he/she likes.

fmul9798

It's a child, and if you have children, you may know that they're not particularly patient with the excitement on Christmas Day...

fmul9798

Thanks for that sugarman - I'll kick off the download to have it ready.

sugarman wrote: »

It can take hours, if not days to update like last year due to anonymous and in general heavy traffic. OP makes a good point.




You can download the latest firmware from Sony online and store it to a USB key. You can then update it via usb or give the usb with the console.

Luap

I can hear all the people looking at this screaming don't unbox it.

readyletsgo

Unbox, do the massive update of operating system, update all games you have too. Theb rebox it.

All set for Christmas morning.

Seriously, do all the updating now. You'll regret it on the day. Research last Christmas.

F1ngers

You can create a user, download the system update and install all games(updates too) you bought(all games have to install to HDD).

Once all are completed you can delete said user.

I don't think deleting the user will impact the games unless you download them - if they are disk copies, you should be ok.
Downloaded games are tied to the account that purchased them.

fmul9798

Thanks again folks

This is something that really isn't said enough when people are purchasing this next gen of consoles for Christmas; any download times that might be associated with it, especially firmware updates and the system updates that occur sometimes when playing a new game, will likely have download times that are doubled, tripled, or much much more (it took me 28 hours to download Fallout 4 on release day) over Christmas. If you're careful, they won't really notice that it has been unboxed whatsoever. But if it is for kids, most definitely get that stuff ready to go.

Varik

F1ngers wrote: »

You can create a user, download the system update and install all games(updates too) you bought(all games have to install to HDD).

Once all are completed you can delete said user.

I don't think deleting the user will impact the games unless you download them - if they are disk copies, you should be ok.
Downloaded games are tied to the account that purchased them.

Never trired so not sure but I don't think you can delete a user if they're the only remaining one.

It'll just be user 1 unless anyone signs onto PSN so It'll be fine to leave it as is, so I don't think it matters as installs and updates don't need a PSN account.

If the kids are young you might want to set up an account for yourself so that they can set up sub accounts that are tied to yours for parental control and such.

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/my/account/

Probably best to make it online on a PC/laptop and only set their accounts up and sign yours in on the PS4 on the day so it's not got anything incriminating on it when they start it up.

Mr Bloat

If you are worried about setting up an account on the console and kids seeing it afterwards, create an account called Santa or some random elf name and tell the kids that the elves were testing the console at the North Pole.

Otacon

Mr Bloat wrote: »

If you are worried about setting up an account on the console and kids seeing it afterwards, create an account called Santa or some random elf name and tell the kids that the elves were testing the console at the North Pole.

"Wait a minute, did they Platinum FIFA!?"

lertsnim

Otacon wrote: »

"Wait a minute, did they Platinum FIFA!?"

Those pesky elves.

CiDeRmAn

readyletsgo wrote: »

Unbox, do the massive update of operating system, update all games you have too. Theb rebox it.

All set for Christmas morning.

Seriously, do all the updating now. You'll regret it on the day. Research last Christmas.

This

Do the updating now, it takes fecking ages, you'll also be able to sort out any network issues before the big day.
And, if you have a few games, pop them in and get those updates out of the way as well.

.G.

When I got my son a PS3 a few years back I asked him in advance what PSN name he wanted. I set that up for him online on my PC and then when I got the console I set up his account on it and got everything up to date and left the account all setup. Just told him Santa set it all up for him cos he's sound like that

Lord Spence

Rumours of possible lizard squad type attacks again this Christmas, it was a disaster last year took my son 3 days after Christmas to be sorted and able to play his new system

CiDeRmAn

Tape up the letter box, no lizards getting in there!
The console will, of course, work without a network connection at all, and most of the games will too, unless like Destiny they require a network connection to work at all.
So, there is always the option of not hooking it into your home network at all and just playing as is, until that night and let it update while you sleep.

Varik

Mr Bloat wrote: »

If you are worried about setting up an account on the console and kids seeing it afterwards, create an account called Santa or some random elf name and tell the kids that the elves were testing the console at the North Pole.

The first user is just down as User 1, unless you log into PSN there's nothing to reveal. They won't even see this as you can set it to log in automatically and then they can sign into a PSN account themselves which replaces the USer1 name.

You also can't call it anything you want, they just go down as User 1, 2, 3 and so on until you log into PSN where they get renamed.