Sony's Cloud Gaming Service Is PlayStation Now [UPDATED]

@dewar:

I think what they're saying is you can pay the subscription fee or rent. I don't think you'd pay twice. At least I hope not.

I remember OnLive being a smidge laggy, then going on to play GaiKai's ME2 demo and being smooth as a baby's bottom. I also like the idea of a digital rental service just like Netflix, if it turns out that that. It'll be perfect for me!

Does anyone know if all games will be available from the PS1 era?

My big American FIOS connection says bring it!

Oh, I fully expect this to fail. This is an excellent point you make, but just how much bandwidth do you need for the streaming for it not to lag and/or have poor image quality.

This is feel-good nonsense so they can look like they give a crap about BC for the first year or so. I give it that long to end up like gameroom.

WILL PAY FOR GAMES

From IGN:

"Sony has confirmed that PlayStation Now will be a subscription-based service -- though whether it will tie-in to existing subscriptions like PlayStation Plus remains to be seen -- and will support online multiplayer and Trophies. Players can also opt not to subscribe and rent games on a by-game basis."

It looks like you can subscribe OR rent individual games. It doesn't look like both.

As a PS plus subscriber I think it's totally fair to charge an additional fee for this service given the potential catalogue it could encompass. But ya know, maybe a little discount for us PS plus guys? :-D

I cannot fathom why you think Sony would buy Gaikai and build this infrastructure just to engender some feel-good nonsense about backward compatibility. This isn't some half-assed ROM dump like Gameroom was.

Never mind that the poster you're quoting has it all wrong. You don't pay twice. You either rent or subscribe, not both.

@joshwent: Your bias/emotional immaturity clearly prevented you from properly reading my post. If you did you would have seen that I wasn't taking a side in a console war, only noticing the disparity between those complaining about the quality of their internet connection in regards to this feature and Microsofts early plans. I dont plan on buying a One if it makes you feel any better.

This is going to be a shitshow, but I'm prepared to pay an extra $50 a year if they have something usable when the dust clears.

Yeah new things suck! Good job Sony giving me an optional avenue to try games i've been interested in but haven't had a chance to try. And what am I supposed to do with the games I already have...play them on the system I bought?Yeah right.

@brendan: Sorry. I guess my emotional immaturity made me think that they were obviously two incomparable situations. One that would penalize a user and lock them out of playing games if their internet ever happened to go out or was inaccessible for any reason, and another that's an online service which a user can choose to engage in when they can. So no disparity exists. But I was probably just blinded by bias. Thank you for correcting me.

Might actually pick up a PS4 now, this sounds awesome but I need to know how much I will be paying first and how many games will be included. Been waiting a Spyro 1-3 re-releases and if they are included in this it is a must buy for me.

This is pretty cool. On my PS3 I can play PS1, PS2 remasters, PS3, and PSN games. I don't have to make recurring payments for this privilege, just a one-time purchase for each title. Unfortunately I cannot buy my favourite PSX game, Ape Escape.

Not everyone cares about playing old games and I think it's a good decision they have moved these costs off of regular gamers so that the people that do want these old games pay for the privilege.

Not sure how i feel about this, OnLive was fine but never lived up to expectations, from what ive heard the UK wont see this service until next year (2015) anyway so not something i need to really concern myself with just now. Not sure i fancy paying another sony sub ontop of PS Plus and Music Unlimited, the shine is starting to wear off a little...

I'm pretty torn on this. On one hand I don't know if I like the idea of paying to play games that I already owned even though it wasn't much of a catalog. That said I pay for Netflix in order to have access to streaming movies, a lot of which I already own. hmmm . . .

As long as the service runs reasonably well and doesn't cost a bomb, it can't be a bad thing. I'm sure they wouldn't release a service with the same issues we saw with Onlive.

I for one am pretty excited that they may have found a viable way to allow us to utilise backwards compatibility without increasing the price of the core system in any way.

Regardless, at the end of the day, the service will be entirely optional. If you don't like the idea, you won't be forced to take it on.

@joshwent: I dont understand how this keeps flying over your head, but if you read my post you'll see I'm not comparing the One vs. PS4. I'm comparing peoples ability to play games under that scheme vs. peoples ability to play games under this specific feature. Regardless of how much more attractive the overall package is, based on feedback of players inability to reconcile the One's always on feature with the quality of their internet connection *specifically* I'm surprised at the proportion of people who dont have a problem reconciling playing with this feature *specifically* in regards to the quality of their internet connection. There. The English language cannot explain this any clearer.

It's nice that they are at least trying to address the Backwards Compatibility thing that always becomes a big thing around console launches. If they can build a good infrastructure and improve on it over the PS4s life-cycle, they would never have to answer the "well is this one backwards compatible?" question again.

I liked Gametap enough to go to the trouble to redeem MyCokeReward points for probably a year's worth of free use. I even thought OnLive had potential (the proto-PS4 sharing was its best feature), so I'm probably in the target audience for this. I hope it doesn't suck!

I don't have a lot of faith in this. They can't even get their music streaming service done right.

This is huge. Microsoft has to offer something like this to stay as relevant as Sony is because this could be the future distribution model for games in general.

@patrickklepek, I think the Gaikai services are only being launched in the States thisSummer. I've previously read that Europe can expect it in 2015. Has this changed now?

This gif makes me a little worried about PlayStation now's input lag.

@brendan said:

Damn you're salty.

@aquacadet said:

This gif makes me a little worried about PlayStation now's input lag.

That's in optimal conditions. They should probably perpetually call it "in beta" like PS home.

@oldirtybearon: Frustratingly dumb conversations on the internet bring it out of me, I apologize.

@zornack: Yeah, shortly after I wrote that comment it dawned on me.

@grantheaslip: maybe but the trick here is that all ps2-ps1 games will look ugly because those games were in sd rez or lower in 4:3 so only the ps3 games are most efected by the artifacting and compresion

Right at this moment, all I want are some actual new PS4 games to play on my PS4 :(

@thephantomstranger said:

@aquacadet said:

This gif makes me a little worried about PlayStation now's input lag.

That's in optimal conditions. They should probably perpetually call it "in beta" like PS home.

oh god no

I'm sure Europe will be stuck with the slower and squished PAL versions of PS1 and PS2 games...

That, along with the (unavoidable) lag, makes it hard for me to care about Playstation Now.

I really hope I don't have to rebuy games I already own.

hmmmmm, still wonder if this solves the problem of games I bought off of PSN that I can't play on PS4 but I could play on PC as streaming

You know, I was looking into buying an Xbox One, but now that I know the PS4 is only 2 1/2 beer cans tall, I'm going to have some things to reconsider.

lolwut

@generic_username said:

@thephantomstranger said:

@aquacadet said:

This gif makes me a little worried about PlayStation now's input lag.

That's in optimal conditions. They should probably perpetually call it "in beta" like PS home.

oh god no

Any input lag is going to be exaggerated by a slow-mo. The same would happen for any existing console. I wouldn't make any judgements about the quality of this service until it actually comes out because there are SO many variables.

awesome, i never got the chance to play Ps1 or Ps2 games

Input lag is the worst and there is no way they can completely eliminate that. That combined with the bandwidth required to stream games in decent quality makes this a tough sell. Onlive used about one megabyte per second, which meant it used a gigabyte of bandwidth in less than 20 minutes. That's 3GB per hour, which would add up quickly if you play games regularly. Maybe Sony has made improvements in compression, but even half of that would be rough. With bandwidth caps as the norm for people in North America, I think this is a neat idea that will be limited by the poor infrastructure we have here.

I'd pay extra for PSNow. My PS+ subscription is well worth the price of admission as-is, and if this means I can binge play 20 yrs of missed JRPG's netflix style, I'm ok with that.