PlayStation Now

By DrunknMunky
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Grand Master

DrunknMunky Veteran

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Sign ups live here

 

5 MBPS+ recommended

 

 
Sony recommends a 5MBPS+ connection to use PlayStation Now, information sign-ups live

Sony?s PlayStation Now will require a minimum 5Mb per second connection, according to a response posted on the PS Blog.

 

ps-now-logo1.jpg

 

Answering a question posed by a PS Blog user, the community management team?s Matthew Harper said: ?In our internal tests, users with this bandwidth or greater have been enjoying a low latency, high-quality gaming experience.?

 

?PS Now tests your connection of each game and optimizes for quality if you are above the minimum requirements,? Harper continued. ?We strive to make the gameplay experience feel as if the game is being played locally on their device ? fast and responsive (including for FPS and games with twitch mechanics).

 

?The Closed Beta will definitely provide a great opportunity to test the experience with gamers with varying connection speeds and our developers will, of course, be working diligently to optimize the service based upon the feedback we receive from the community.?

 

PS Now will not only allow users to purchase titles through the service, but rent them as well. Should a user decide to purchase the full version later, they can do so easily as all files are stores to the cloud. This means all saved game progress will be available as well.

 

Those interested in more information on PS Now can sign up through here.

 

Meanwhile, the PS Blog has also posted a hands-on with the service and how it handled playing The Last of Us.

 

http://www.vg247.com/2014/01/08/sony-recommends-a-5mbps-connection-to-use-playstation-now-information-sign-ups-live/

Grand Master

trooper11

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Well if a 5mbps connection means a smooth experience, not bad. Now we just need to see if their internal testing matches the real world. Also they mention that image quality will scale with the connection speed, so I wonder if that means you need a connection much faster than 5 in order to get say ps3 games in native quality.

I'm signed up for more info!

Its strange they say you can 'purchase' games vs renting them. Surely that means purchase a subscription to access the games.

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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...

A question for the more technically advanced crowd.  Would this be overkill for Sony (using USA as an example): 3 Data Centers in the West Coast, 3 Data Centers in the Mid West, and 3 Data Centers in the East Coast.

This should give users an decent rout to the closest server available, and a decent ping.  This would also be very expensive for Sony as well

That's nowhere near enough, and remember that this doesn't function like a multiplayer game (Where it can do lag compensation), not only do you need a really low ping (Like closer to <20ms), you also need the server side to be able to output frames extremely quickly at a good quality (OnLive was using very powerful hardware encoders and claimed to have something like 4ms of encoding latency)

As an example, assume you have a latency of 20ms (So a RTT of 40ms, fairly normal) and a frame rendering latency of 4ms (So 24ms in total), during a game the content displayed on your screen will be 24ms behind the server state, and any input you make (For that frame) will take another 20ms to reach the server, meaning your input is received 44ms after the frame was rendered (And assuming a 30fps game, that means that the AI has had another chance to fire before you, etc.). There's 2 factors to reduce that time, the distance between you and the server and the time taken to encode a frame of video, and the only thing they can realistically improve is frame rendering time.

Edit: Look at the existing solutions that work (The Sony Vita thing and Nvidia Shield), they're both local network.

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GotBored

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Edit: Look at the existing solutions that work (The Sony Vita thing and Nvidia Shield), they're both local network.

 

 

Sony Vita can do remote play over the internet. (Not just local network)

 

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/171382-ps4-remote-play-works-like-a-charm-over-lte-but-not-with-slower-connections

 

Extreme Tech reviewer tested it on a mobile phone LTE network and apparently it "offered shockingly playable results after automatically connecting to my PS4 over the internet" according to the reviewer.

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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That said, the lag introduced by the streaming technology is definitely noticable. If you?re going to play a competitive action game like this, you?ll definitely find yourself at a disadvantage. Single-player experiences like Contrast or Flower will work just fine if your internet connection can handle it, but don?t push your luck with games like Call of Duty or Battlefield.

So games that aren't time sensitive or need quick reflexes don't work well.

Grand Master

+Audioboxer Subscriber²

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so a DS3 is required,even on smartphones and tablets. no touchscreen support

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/9/5289988/playstation-now-will-require-a-dualshock-controller-for-tvs-tablets

This is a positive, how the heck would you play TLoU or GoW with on screen touch controls? lol

By positive I mean that the controller is going to be compatible with all these options, leaving us with touch controls on mobile devices would of been a joke. On a phone I can imagine the wow factor of hey guys check out God of War on my phone, dead 1 minute later, controlling this sucks, never play again.

Access has done a 10 things you need to know video (link won't post from my phone for some reason, YouTube PSAccess).

Grand Master

trooper11

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This is a positive, how the heck would you play TLoU or GoW with on screen touch controls? lol

By positive I mean that the controller is going to be compatible with all these options, leaving us with touch controls on mobile devices would of been a joke. On a phone I can imagine the wow factor of hey guys check out God of War on my phone, dead 1 minute later, controlling this sucks, never play again.

Is it limited to just a ds3 or can any USB controller be used? I'd prefer to use another controller honestly.

Grand Master

vcfan

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This is a positive, how the heck would you play TLoU or GoW with on screen touch controls? lol

By positive I mean that the controller is going to be compatible with all these options, leaving us with touch controls on mobile devices would of been a joke. On a phone I can imagine the wow factor of hey guys check out God of War on my phone, dead 1 minute later, controlling this sucks, never play again.

Access has done a 10 things you need to know video (link won't post from my phone for some reason, YouTube PSAccess).

 

I agree, touch screen for console games is bunk. im merely posting the info

 

There are other Bluetooth controllers out there though.

I was hoping that Sony would offer access to this service on pcs or win tablets, maybe as a win 8 app, which then could open it up to USB controllers

who says they aren't. sony sells vaio win 8 pcs, I could see them preloading the app with their devices. There is also a rumor they are making win phones, I could see how they would also preload it there as well, to counter the integrated xbox stuff.

Grand Master

+Audioboxer Subscriber²

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There are other Bluetooth controllers out there though.

I was hoping that Sony would offer access to this service on pcs or win tablets, maybe as a win 8 app, which then could open it up to USB controllers

Good points!

The PS3 supports USB compliant controllers as it is.

Rising Star

Houtei

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Something I always wandered is why Sony or Microsoft dont have some kind of digital renting system.  Where I can pay like gamefly 15 a month or something and download any game i want and play it but can only have 1 game downloaded at a time or something and just require online checks every so often while playing downloaded rentals. Or even allow gamefly to do digital rentals like that some how.

 

I realize though this is for ps3 and such and is mainly for backwards compatibility but i would pay for a current digital renting system all day. Since I game so much theres not many older games I really care to play again.  I use to like go back and play some but these days i stay current.

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GotBored

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Something I always wandered is why Sony or Microsoft dont have some kind of digital renting system.  Where I can pay like gamefly 15 a month or something and download any game i want and play it but can only have 1 game downloaded at a time or something and just require online checks every so often while playing downloaded rentals. Or even allow gamefly to do digital rentals like that some how.

 

I realize though this is for ps3 and such and is mainly for backwards compatibility but i would pay for a current digital renting system all day. Since I game so much theres not many older games I really care to play again.  I use to like go back and play some but these days i stay current.

 

I'm pretty sure that's the main plan with PlayStation Now an all you can eat subscription service or buy/rent individual titles if you don't want the subscription service.

Rising Star

Houtei

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I'm pretty sure that's the main plan with PlayStation Now an all you can eat subscription service or buy/rent individual titles if you don't want the subscription service.

Yeah except my problem with it is that it is a streaming service like onlive and the quality and latency is going to be a big issue for a lot of people like me that live in a crap internet location. I doubt my 6mb is going to work.  It would be much better imo if they had a rental service where the game was actually downloaded on to your console and played from there.

Grand Master

wakjak

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Yeah except my problem with it is that it is a streaming service like onlive and the quality and latency is going to be a big issue for a lot of people like me that live in a crap internet location. I doubt my 6mb is going to work.  It would be much better imo if they had a rental service where the game was actually downloaded on to your console and played from there.

Sony recommend a 5mb/s connection for a good time on PSNow.

Grand Master

trooper11

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Maybe they'll expand PS+ subscriptions to different types. You can keep the current style sub or you can choose a rental system sub?

 

 

Just a thought.

 

I like that idea. Have different tiers that include more services. Give us the choice.

 

I'm pretty sure that's the main plan with PlayStation Now an all you can eat subscription service or buy/rent individual titles if you don't want the subscription service.

I'm not sure how 'buying' a title that is streamed to you would work, but they did hint at that, so we will see.

 

 

Sony recommend a 5mb/s connection for a good time on PSNow.

They did indeed say that, but then they followed that up with the point that the system will dynamically raise and lower the graphical quality of the game to work better with your connection.

If that is the case, then what does 5mb/s get you. Are they saying that gets you native quality for any ps3 game or is that the bottom level that offers 'acceptable' quality in their estimation and that a higher speed is needed for native quality.

I can't wait to try this out myself.

Grand Master

HawkMan

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If that is the case, then what does 5mb/s get you. Are they saying that gets you native quality for any ps3 game or is that the bottom level that offers 'acceptable' quality in their estimation and that a higher speed is needed for native quality.

I can't wait to try this out myself.

 

 

There is no native quality, there is compression loss on all of them, relatively much as well, native would eat up 40-50MB, and they wouldn't pay that for their own upstream either, not worth it. 

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