Playstation Now (Sony's gaikai streaming service)

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2014/01/07/playstation-now-game-streaming-service-unveiled-at-ces/

Rolling out later this year in America on PS4 and PS3, then later on PS Vita and eventually a whole range of online devices. EU service is still TBA. Only involves PS3 games for now it seems.

Quote :

In addition to PlayStation platforms, most 2014 US models of Sony’s BRAVIA TV line-up will support PS Now. Eventually the service will expand beyond PlayStation platforms and Sony devices, allowing you to stream PlayStation games across a broad range of Internet-connected devices.

does this mean we are seeing the end of the "console"

naaah, i saw the conference, he literally said PS1, PS2 and PS3 games.

testtubebaby wrote:

does this mean we are seeing the end of the "console"

No, because this will still be inferior to playing on local hardware. Anything short of a LAN connection will have latency issues to some degree, not to mention the fact that most home internet connections just aren't good enough to stream high bitrate + high resolution video without any hangs.

That was a seriously stupid question to ask.

why was it stupid? because you know the answer maybe? ye the internet probably couldnt cope with it atm but 15 yrs ago we was running dial-up, then we got broadband which is getting quicker all the time in the future who knows what will happen

There's not really much point talking about future technology, what matter is how these things will actually work when they're available.

This is definitely a step towards that, if it works. So stop being an idiot Baal.

No it's not. The internet is still a new thing, streaming games through an internet connection is not even a small step forward because the technology is so new no one knows if it's even going to last. There could be a million problems with this streaming service just playing games that have about a gig's worth of data let alone even thinking about games like Uncharted 3 and Last of Us which take up an entire blu-ray disc. As Neo said there's literally no reason you shouldn't just play the game locally on the console you purchased it on short of you not having one anymore, because that's far more reliable than something that's still as unrefined as the internet.

This is not bringing us closer to the end of consoles, if anything it's just strengthening them.

Baal wrote:

No it's not. The internet is still a new thing, streaming games through an internet connection is not even a small step forward because the technology is so new no one knows if it's even going to last. There could be a million problems with this streaming service just playing games that have about a gig's worth of data let alone even thinking about games like Uncharted 3 and Last of Us which take up an entire blu-ray disc. As Neo said there's literally no reason you shouldn't just play the game locally on the console you purchased it on short of you not having one anymore, because that's far more reliable than something that's still as unrefined as the internet.

This is not bringing us closer to the end of consoles, if anything it's just strengthening them.

You're not a new thing and its considerably older than you.

Your last statement seriously wtf, because apparently trying things which don't require a console just makes consoles more important.

I am cautiously optimistic, I doubt this will work well for a good few years, but i'm also aware of some of the insane leaps in technology we've had.  Fibre optics for instance make this plausible (i'm not saying working well, before you get your overexcited again) and some countries in asia already have those.

Anyway they said you need a minimum of 5MB/s to even run this, services will obviously be limited at first.  Since they are doing closed Beta we'll see how this all works in practice.  You know because sensible people actually use what works in practice as a way to judge things and not comments based on nothing.

I also don't think you understand the concept of streaming a game, going by your blu ray comment. They've mentioned visual downgrades at the moment, suggesting its not the PS3 version of the Last of Us you are playing.

That new comment was meant to be in relativity. The internet has been around for years and people are still learning new things about it all of the time. The Blu-Ray comment was also meant to be relative, I know how streaming works Buu, I've been using this kind of stuff for a while. This doesn't mean stuff like those bigger games won't suffer just graphic downgrades, there's also going to be some issues with the actual game. Your stream can only support so much before it begins to lag, stutter and eventually crash and even with graphics turned down these are still big games you are trying to run across a 5/MB at least connection, never mind stuff like Revengeance where there's a million working parts at once.

Quote :

Your last statement seriously wtf, because apparently trying things which don't require a console just makes consoles more important.

Do you seriously think this won't make consoles more prominent? The entire idea of Gaikai is to make it so your PS4 can run older Playstation games without the need of the older consoles. If this turns out well every other company is going to try this with their console to the point this is an advertised feature on other consoles. This is not seeing the end of consoles, not even in the ballpark, this is just putting everything in one neat place.

I don't think this thing will be a total failure, I'm willing to give Sony enough credit as they've done a great job turning around their services and handling their internet stuff, it'll probably do well with PS1 and PS2 games, but some PS3 games don't seem realistic with this thing.

A combination of compression and graphical downgrades, might be enough.  I think you're ignoring the important fact here its going to be available on TVs and mobile devices, this isn't aimed at the core game market.  People won't be playing for 4-5 hours, normal people don't do that.  I think its entirely plausible for a game to run for an hour or so without the connection crapping out or freezing.  5MB/s being the minimum shows tht you will need a faast connection to get this to run well it wouldn't be suprising they'd expect you to be running 10+MB/s.  They are choosing what games are going to be available to the service, its unsuprising they chose GoW, Last of Us, Puppeteer and Beyond as the demo games as those wouldn't be largely effectedd by input lag (yes i'm saying GoW is a slow paced gamed).

I see no reason why this isn't the first step towards consoles being obsolete.  Unlike your statement which outright acts like this will have no connection , mine relies on timespan, me saying this can be a step towards it even if its a thousand years down the line what i said will still be right.

Either way my comments are in regards to you saying someone else asked a stupid question, when showing the fact there is discussion around the topic it really isn't.

Asking if consoles are going to be dead is a dumb question in any scenario because as long as there exists video games there will be consoles. There's a large portion of people from the West who use PCs, but there's just as massive a number of people who don't use their PC games for video games and that's not even accounting for most eastern societies, which PC Gaming died with the MSX2. This is not taking in factors like console makers who pay for specific devs to work under their brand, marketing, and so on.

It's just a question of what consoles will exist.

He put the word console in speech marks and it certainly could be a step towards the end of the console in the traditional sense. If this works the market shift would be bigger towards any device that can stream. I don't think you can deny that. You just act like this is definitely not going to work without huge problems.

If you told anyone they didn't need to buy a console to play all current games they'd probably be up for trying it, would certainly remove the issues with system exclusivity, because if i had an xbox and i could play PS exclusives without buying a playstation console i'd be up for it.

People said that iphones marked the end of consoles too. There will be no significant market shift if streaming doesn't work properly, which it won't.

Neo wrote:

People said that iphones marked the end of consoles too. There will be no significant market shift if streaming doesn't work properly, which it won't.

Well thats fair enough, although if I get a fibre optic connection which are easy to get now, i'd be willing to give this a shot.

Only people with Apple products said such stupid stuff, although it would be ignorant to say it didn't have an effect at all.

well, I'm definitely going to try it out when it's available here, got a 10+MB connection, so shouldn't be too much of a problem for me I think.

Latency will be an issue regardless of your connection speed.

well, according to guys who tried it at the event, there's no latency issues. (with using the actual servers that are going to be used for the service, not some special servers that were there especially for the event)

obviously, yeah, the connection speed at the event is going to be high speed of course, but given that you have one, and given that we believe that the servers used are off-site servers, it seems reasonable to think that latency won't actually be an issue. since these guys are reporting that it isn't.

Demos at trade shows are highly controlled, it would be naive to assume that anything at E3, CES etc is representative of the final product. The xbones that were being played at E3 2013 were actually just high spec computers running windows.

Actually forget that, it doesn't even matter. Anyone who has ever played an online game should know how much of a difference latency makes. Sony doesn't have magic internet powers, they can't just make a problem, one that literally every online game has to deal with, disappear.

in reaction to your crossed out sentence :

why do you think I said: "given that we believe" ?

but you're right.

but isn't latency an issue in online gaming because you're also playing with other people around the world, and the server's trying to make up for that or something? I don't really know too much about it, but I would think that if I'm just streaming a game, with no one else involved and I have a good connection up/down to their server, I won't have that many issues...?

You're thinking of the systems developers use to try and compensate for it, the sort of things that create those weird hitbox issues in fps games. Latency is just how long it takes a bit of data to travel from your system to the server, so it can have effects like this when it's too high. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuI8p1pIAVw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

oh right.

yeah, well anyways, as I said, I'm gonna try it when it's available here, and I'll give you my honest opinion on it.

I think only slower paced games will be avilable on this at first, they've stated outright that all titles wouldn't be avilable.

Given the pricing:

Prices:

$19.99 = 1 month
$44.99 = 3 months

If you didn't own a PS3 I think thats actually a decent price.  You'd be able to catch up on the previous games in a series if you wanted to before jumping on to a PS4 sequel.

Also it works out if you're playing shorter games better obviously to, but given the pricing of some rare games.  Its a nice idea.

I'm not going to comment on input lag etc.  as I'm not using the service and honestly its up to the person and their internet connection how much of a problem this poses.