kurupt

In concept this is pretty exciting. Hopefully the game selection and price will match concept when it's released.

Fandango

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/07/p...-now-hands-on/

edstein

This just doesn't interest me at all. The lag issues plus the reduced resolution is a deal breaker. Maybe old. PS1/2 games will be fine but PS3 games are going to suck, IMO.

discostu1337

The resolution is reduction is not noticeable. The lag however...

Decker

Lag issues? That Engadget article linked directly above your post notes "Zero perceptible lag". Sounds way better than I expected

edstein

I just don't get the streaming advantage. How about let me play $15 a month to play ANY game from the old consoles. Let me download the game, I can play when I want, in the original resolution and with no possible lag issues. If this was such a great service and a great idea, we'd all be playing Onlive right now and we wouldn't be buying PS4s and Xbones.

Michael Corvin

What console are you going to download it to? Neither console is backwards compatible, remember?

fumanstan

Yeah, streaming allows them to avoid the technical problems of porting or emulating old games written for a different architecture.

I'm curious though, would streaming on the PS3 mean you can stream other PS3 games, or just games from previous generations? It sounds like you could stream anything, even PS4 games, which seems interesting.

taffer

I don't see why you couldn't stream PS3 games on a PS3 console. You're just streaming from the Playstation Now PS3 server to your own console.

I don't think they are streaming PS4 games, are they? I thought the announcement just said PS1, 2, and 3. Streaming PS4 games would defeat the purpose of buying a PS4, and Sony wouldn't want that.

If they are streaming to tablets and smartphones, why aren't they streaming to PCs? I would rather play on a PC monitor than a small tablet screen.

Fandango

They can be streamed to TVs also so that would defeat the purpose of streaming it to PC.

Tarantino

OnLive was a completely stand alone product.

Michael Corvin

I was referring to Ed's request to download games instead of stream.

mhg83

Which is what Sega Channel did. I remember you would have access to a select number of titles per month. It would DL to the device you purchased. I think it was just a HDD to store the games. Way ahead of it's time.

fumanstan

Only certain TV's though, right?

RichC2

Yup, only TVs with the app built into it.

One of the big appeals of the PS Vita TV is it's supposed to have access to this as well.

Decker

Initially. Others might come later

Don't forget (though it sometimes seems like Sony USA might have already) about Vita TV. That $100 device will play all Vita-enabled games and will therefor also stream Playstation Now. That would work with any TV

taffer

How so? Everyone has a PC, but few people have a Smart TV.

Jay G.

The problem with local play is that the local console has to be able to play the game. Emulation works well for really old console games, but the more recent the console, the harder it is to emulate. PS1 games are pretty straightforward to emulate, but the PS4 wouldn't be able to emulate PS3 games easily, or even PS2 games, which is why backwards compatibility isn't available on the PS4 or XB1 for the previous generation.

The advantage of streaming is that the local hardware doesn't have to be able to actually run the game, it just has to stream the I/O back and forth. This allows for PS3 games running on the PS4, or even PS Vita, where they otherwise wouldn't be able to play them.

One could take the streaming concept even further, where a game originally designed for the Xbox is streamed to a Playstation, or a PC version of a game is streamed. Sony and MS aren't likely to do this sort of cross-platform streaming though.

For Sony, the Vita TV allows an inexpensive option for people to stream these games to extra TVs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Vita_TV

If you think that Sega Channel was ahead of its time, then the Gamelink service for the Atari 2600, started in 1983, a decade before Sega Channel, was way, way, way ahead of it's time.
http://www.atariage.com/2600/archive...?SystemID=2600

The Playcable for Intellivision in 1981 was even earlier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayCable

taffer

Is the Vita TV coming to the US? The wikipedia page says nothing about a US release. It only says Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Decker

It doesn't have an official date yet, but we all assume/know it's coming. My guess is right after E3, in time to coincide with PlayStation Now's launch.

edstein

How about spending the same energy being put into a streaming service and put that into a backward compatibility patch. They did it on the 360 and PS3. Surely it can be done on these new systems.

chuckd21

It's not a matter of a patch. Not remotely close.

taffer

Backwards compatibility isn't that simple. It would require far far more time, effort, and money than simply streaming.

The hardware in the PS4/Xbox One is far different from their predecessors. They would have to program emulators for old generation games to run on them.

Programming emulators is incredibly difficult and becoming even more difficult with each passing generation. For example, hackers haven't even gotten a PS2 emulator running very well on modern PC hardware yet.

The first PS3 model actually had a PS1 and PS2 chip inside it, so it could run those games natively. The PS4 lacks those chips so it would have to emulate.

The 360 did not have an Xbox chip, so it did emulate. Remember though how slowly the patches came out, and in the end they only got a few games running before they gave up on it. Many of the games didn't emulate well either and have problems running on hardware they weren't designed for.

Its just far easier and much more practical to have an actual PS3 or 360 stream through a server and onto your own device.

Deftones

I guess this makes sense, but it slightly disappointing. You will require a Dualshock controller to play any streamed game, even if you are playing on a tablet/phone. Sort of kills the point of this: http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/9/528...or-tvs-tablets

Jay G.

Question: How were you expecting to be able to play a PS2 / PS3 game on a tablet/phone without a controller?

There's plenty of people that attach a controller via bluetooth to their tablet/phone now for native games. I don't see why doing so for Playstation Now "kills the point."