PlayStation Now Will Bring PS4 Games to your PC (engadget.com)

You could soon play PlayStation 4 exclusives like Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Remastered on your PC. From a report on Engadget: Sony is bringing the PS4 catalog to its streaming game service PlayStation Now, the company said today in a blog post. The announcement is light on details, but we know that every game in the service, including PS4 games, will be part of a single PS Now subscription.

Comments

Re:Cool!

[DontBeAMoran]

And on my 56kbps internet dial-up connection!

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

U in Seattle too bro?

Oh man finally! I totally wanted more lag and..

[Tyr07]

less control!

Oh man thank you so much, please try again with services where you get 100% of the hardware and software and we just funnel money to you.
That way you can eventually charge per hour of a game played instead of just buying the game and playing it for as much as you want.

Thats like the unlimited data scams. What, you're losing profits over people who play your game for 400 hours vs those who play for 20 hours and need to charge these heavy users more money since they're getting more out of it?

PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[gravewax]

streaming games SUCK, the latency, resolution sacrifices and bandwidth requirements make all but the simplest games problematic. This turd needs to be left on the PS where it belongs.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[JustNiz]

I totally agree with you but I strongly suspect that most games companies see this as the future, and that the days of actually having your own copy of anything are numbered.
We're already seeing the same thing happening with the popularity of streaming audio vs. locally stored music, despite all the obvious downsides.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[JustNiz]

Just like already happened with streaming audio, the people that actually give a shit about stuff like audio/visual quality and lag will be in the definite minority, and they will be increasingly marginalized until there are so few of us left, they can just stop supporting us without any impact to their profits.

The sheeple consumers that will buy into streaming games are probably not the people that ever had a top-end PC so won't even know or care what they are missing, and will just appreciate the convenience of not needing a PC/console at all.
Then the next generation will grow up just thinking that the low-res lossy graphics and lag are as good as it can ever get, and no doubt nVidia/AMD will come out with a whole new range of products just to improve the graphics and lag of streaming games, probably by defining/using a whole new protocol that will still run the game remotely (so games companies can avoid giving consumers any opportunity to pirate the games) but the graphics will be rendered locally. And here we go round the equivalent of the console loop again with more opportunity for the companies to sell new hardware.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[Jeremi]

I'm guessing that lag and lousy visual quality won't pair well with VR goggles, no?

So at least the VR games won't suffer from these things (or if they do, rampant nausea will kill the market very quickly).

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[Sark666]

Have you actually tried it? It works really well. I used this because I always wanted to play the last of us and ended up checking out quite a few other games on the ps3.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[JustNiz]

true, but as someone with a Vive and a high-spec PC to run it, I'm already aware that I'm vulnerable because I'm in the absolute minority of gamers.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[gravewax]

Just like already happened with streaming audio, the people that actually give a shit about stuff like audio/visual quality and lag will be in the definite minority, and they will be increasingly marginalized until there are so few of us left, they can just stop supporting us without any impact to their profits.

The sheeple consumers that will buy into streaming games are probably not the people that ever had a top-end PC so won't even know or care what they are missing, and will just appreciate the convenience of not needing a PC/console at all. Then the next generation will grow up just thinking that the low-res lossy graphics and lag are as good as it can ever get, and no doubt nVidia/AMD will come out with a whole new range of products just to improve the graphics and lag of streaming games, probably by defining/using a whole new protocol that will still run the game remotely (so games companies can avoid giving consumers any opportunity to pirate the games) but the graphics will be rendered locally. And here we go round the equivalent of the console loop again with more opportunity for the companies to sell new hardware.

you are comparing apples and oranges. streaming games has a noticeable detrimental effect on the quality of the experience, for most people the difference in quality between streaming audio and high quality high bitrate local copies is ZERO as they don't have the hardware to get the benefit. With gaming though users notice even the smallest of input lag and choppy and blurry resolution is noticeable even to someone that doesn't understand the difference while playing on exactly the same hardware.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Just like already happened with streaming audio, the people that actually give a shit about stuff like audio/visual quality and lag will be in the definite minority, and they will be increasingly marginalized until there are so few of us left, they can just stop supporting us without any impact to their profits.

Spotify streams 320kbps Ogg Vorbis. Google Play Music streams 320kbps MP3, Apply Music streams 256kbps AAC, Tidal streams 320kbps AAC (or CD-quality FLAC if you pay extra).

All of those are audibly transparent, ie. indistinguishable from CD-quality audio (or "hi-res" snake oil).

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[mjwx]

streaming games SUCK, the latency, resolution sacrifices

Basically it's like playing on a console.

bandwidth requirements make all but the simplest games problematic.

Even browser game load themselves into your browser and run locally.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[mjwx]

I totally agree with you but I strongly suspect that most games companies see this as the future, and that the days of actually having your own copy of anything are numbered.

It doesn't matter what the games companies think, it's what people are willing to buy that matters and the PCGMR definitely wont be buying streaming only games. Filthy Console Peasants may put up with it for a while.

Anyone who thinks Ubisoft, EA, et al. are too big to fail... remember THQ. They went bust in 2013 (so console players may not remember them) and all of their properties were sold off for pennies on the pound. I predict the first company to try to go all streaming will be the next to fail.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[CronoCloud]

Don't you realize that the quality of PS Now depends on your Internet connection?

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[JustNiz]

>> All of those are audibly transparent, ie. indistinguishable from CD-quality audio (or "hi-res" snake oil).

Even if you believe that high-rate lossy compression sounds as good as CD, most true audiophiles laugh at CD. I know of at least 3 people that buy vinyl and swear its significantly better-sounding than CD.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[JustNiz]

> It doesn't matter what the games companies think, it's what people are willing to buy that matters

I will bet you that most people (especially most console gamers) desperate to get their hands on the next release in their favorite series of "Total Death War XXIIIIIII" will still buy it even if it is only streaming. Sure many might moan but they'll still hand over their money especially if the graphics they are streaming have more complexity than their (local) console hardware could render. You know their on-line community will make up their own lame excuses on behalf of the company to forgive the inconvenience of streaming, and no doubt there will be the usual cleuless but vocal religious pro-streaming converts that will also emerge to further muddy the water,

On top of that you can bet all the gaming review websites will be paid-off to review streaming games as "excellent!!! MUST have!!!" and "Disks are now Dead!!!".
At that point streaming is a no-brainer in most connedsumers minds.

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[KozmoStevnNaut]

>> All of those are audibly transparent, ie. indistinguishable from CD-quality audio (or "hi-res" snake oil).

Even if you believe that high-rate lossy compression sounds as good as CD, most true audiophiles laugh at CD. I know of at least 3 people that buy vinyl and swear its significantly better-sounding than CD.

Well, then you know at least 3 people who are blithering idiots.

"Hi-res" audio is indistinguishable from a CD-quality version of the same master, it has been shown in tests several times.

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/brows...

Re:PS Now gets this fundamentally WRONG

[JustNiz]

>> Well, then you know at least 3 people who are blithering idiots

I don't disagree, however please don't pretend the audiophile culture doesn't exist and also takes itself VERY seriously. Apart from anything else, there is clearly a whole industry out there getting very rich on it, real or imagined.

http://hothardware.com/news/10...

Hardware?

[JustNiz]

Would it be reasonable to assume they actually don't have racks of PS4s and robots running around plugging in DVDs everytime someone requests a different game? I'm guessing they are running a (very good) PS4 emulator on server-grade (say Intel/nVidia/Linux) platforms.
If so, it makes me wonder what it would take to get our hands on said emulator.

Re:Hardware?

[Sycraft-fu]

It might just be custom hardware. A version of the PS4 that connects to a remote array that serves up game images. It wouldn't be hard for them to have something like that made.

Re:Hardware?

[bernywork]

PS4 is x64 FreeBSD, why would you need an emulator? All you need is the right libraries for a runtime environment.

Re:Hardware?

[Narishma]

PS4s don't run games from discs. They only use them for installation and authentication purposes.

Re:Hardware?

[JustNiz]

I know. I have a ps4. I guess rather than "Disks are dead" they would acutally use something more like "installed games are now dead", but it doesn't make as catchy a headline and besides I'm sure you get the point.

Re: Hardware?

[Shepanator]

Ps4 hardware has specific modifications that makes native pc play impossible For instance the gpu can directly address the Cpu l2 cache

Playstation Network Account

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I don't have a Playstation, but this may be the push I need to take over the PSN account someone named Jared set up using my gmail address. (Apparently Sony's account setup process doesn't have a "Click the link we emailed you to verify you actually typed the address correctly," step.)

More disturbingly, neither does Match.com. (Disturbing due to how your inbox looks 4 hours after a 62-year-old woman signs up for a dating service using your email account.)

Re:Playstation Network Account

[TheRealMindChild]

I just recently was given a PS3. Went to sign up for an account and someone else used my email address. There is no undoing it. They won't send a reset to that email account. They won't undo it from the other account.

Re:Playstation Network Account

[Highdude702]

The hell they won't I just did it like 3 months ago. Go to lost username, it will ask for email enter email to get username. Than go to lost password and enter username and email and retrieve email with reset link. Their account is now yours as they have no access to the email address. Now that being said they can call Sony and give them their bank info that was used for any psn purchases and recover the account that was but that would then reset the email address and you would no longer need to worry.

Never Forget!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony put rootkits on audio cds to try and block file sharing. These installed automatically and without any disclosure, and opened security holes.

They lost a class-action lawsuit over this.

Then they went and did it again!.

And lost a second class-action lawsuit.

You CANNOT TRUST SONY!

Re: Never Forget!

[Shepanator]

Didn't BMG do those things? And then the controversy came out just after Sony acquired them?

Just make a PS4 VM.

[Gravis Zero]

If we're being honest here, both the PS4 and XBox One are just a compact PCs with unimpressive specs. The only difference is they come with a specialized OS and proprietary software. It seems to me that with a modern x86_64 chip (since they have built-in VM capabilities) that it should be entirely possible to run games for either console at their native speed on most desktop computers. This is why I could never bring myself to get either system, they are shitty computers without any real special features.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[brantondaveperson]

You're right of course. But there's a big advantage to bringing a box home that just works, and plays games, and that's all. They work in a lounge context, they're fairly quiet, they turn on really fast, the software is specifically designed to be used with a controller, pairing controllers works really well. Etc etc.

Specs are very far from the whole story. No-one really cares about them. PS one games are still pretty fun to play, even though the resolution is awful.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[Ash-Fox]

Just look at how much emulators need beefy PCs to run games compared to their original systems and you'll understand how much the OS changes everything.

Barely nothing. Running Windows inside VMware on Linux runs a fair few games for me with next to no FPS or graphical difference for me.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[enrique556]

If we're being honest here, both the PS4 and XBox One are just a compact PCs with unimpressive specs.

A simple bit of reading on the wikipedia page for ps4 would tell you that it's not just a PC with unimpressive specs. The main difference (and the main reason it'll be very difficult for any PC to emulate at reasonable speed) is that the 8-core CPU & the GPU share 8gb of GDDR5 ram. The new 8core ryzens combined with faster pcie specs and ddr4 system ram might help PCs catch up but anything written for the PS4 will run like shit on a high-end gaming PC for (uneducated guess here) at least another 5 years.
I don't know the performance difference between ddr3/4 and gddr5, but not having to shuffle textures and other bits between ram and gpu memory is a huge advantage for games on its own.
People wonder why ports from consoles have so many issues on PCs, but with my limited experience with programming, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to rip the low end guts out of most of these games and re-engineer them just to get above single digit FPS on PC hardware.
I do know for certain that game performance is VERY sensitive (by orders of magnitude) to small changes in cache sizes, mem latency, bus width etc. You can watch youtube vids of Mike Acton & Scott Meyers explaining some of this.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[Highdude702]

You just named everything my pc does better and faster than a console. Including boot up(I never turn it off anyways) and controller pairing(steam controller is awesome) and I'm not locked down to proprietary bullshit expensive headsets and other peripherals. I understand for most a console is good for not having to be technically advanced. But anybody that calls themselves a nerd that owns a console for a reason other than to play games with their non nerd friends is stupid.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[Highdude702]

Gddr5 is just ddr3 focused at gpu's I wondered what the difference was when I got my gtx1070. Was very impressed at how they make it seem so different when in all honestly it's the same. And not even latest. But HBM will be around before they switch to ddr4 and call it super duper gddr5

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[mjwx]

You're right of course. But there's a big advantage to bringing a box home that just works, and plays games, and that's all.

And if consoles still did that, it'd be great.

I watched my housemate set up a multiplayer game of FIFA on the PS3... it reminded me of the 286 days because things just took that long. He needed log in (mandatory), then register guests, set up controllers, then loading took so long they needed to put in a mini-game to prevent people from getting bored. I could have gone to my PC, booted it up, loaded GTA V (which being a console port, does not load quickly) and they still wouldn't have been playing.

plays games, and that's all.

Except all the crap they're trying to bundle into it like Netflix, media centre functions, social networks, so on and so forth. It's almost at the point where playing games on a PS or XB is a secondary function.

They work in a lounge context, they're fairly quiet,

I can hear the fans in my housemates PS4 from another floor. Thats why he has his TV up to stupid levels of volume. So I guess that's what you mean by "lounge context"

they turn on really fast,

I guess they do... However you need to do another 5 minutes of bollocks to play a game. So loading times are a killer.

the software is specifically designed to be used with a controller

Which lacks the precision of a KB and mouse. I mean you don't have a choice of controllers at all.

pairing controllers works really well.

Works so well on my housemates PS4, he sometimes does it twice.

Now the battery life on the controller is so bad, they need to be charged every 2 games of FIFA.

Specs are very far from the whole story.

Yep, they're only the start of the deficiencies.

Things I _don't_ get by not being a console gamer.
- Paying for multiplayer.
- Missing out on RTS and TBS games.
- Mandatory system updates that disable functionality.
- Not being able to fix my own system.
- RROD and YLOD's.
- No Mods.
- 30 FPS limits.
- 1080p resolution limit.
- high prices of games.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the hint.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[CronoCloud]

Including boot up

Rest mode

and controller pairing(steam controller is awesome)

On the PS4 all you do is hit the PS4 button.

I'm not locked down to proprietary bullshit expensive headsets and other peripherals.

I don't know where you got the idea that console headsets are proprietary. The PS2 used standard USB headsets.

The PS3 used either usb or Bluetooth.

The PS4 uses either USB or analog.

If you want to use a keyboard you can use whatever USB (or bluetooth one you want)

If you want to use a HOTAS with War Thunder you can use whatever Saitek or Thrustmaster one you want.

But anybody that calls themselves a nerd that owns a console for a reason other than to play games with their non nerd friends is stupid.

I run Linux, I think people playing games on Windows are the stupid ones.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[CronoCloud]

And if consoles still did that, it'd be great.
I watched my housemate set up a multiplayer game of FIFA on the PS3...

The key word in that statement is "PS3", things are more streamlined on the PS4 where everything is more unified.

I can hear the fans in my housemates PS4 from another floor.

Fat PS3's are louder....he probably doesn't have it well ventilated or else it has dust/cat hair in it.

Which lacks the precision of a KB and mouse. I mean you don't have a choice of controllers at all.

Sure we've got a choice, it just depends on the game. Supporting mouse+keyboard (or other controls) on Playstations is a developer choice, not Sony's. I've got PS2/PS3/PS4 games within 10 feet of my current position that DO support various control methods.

Works so well on my housemates PS4, he sometimes does it twice.

Perhaps your "mate" doesn't know how to properly use the PS4, because you only have to tap the PS button ONCE to make the controller active.

- Paying for multiplayer.

Technically PS+ subscriptions aren't just for multiplayer, they include the Instant game library. Also some games don't require PS+ for online multiplayer on the PS4, and it is NEVER required on the PS3 or Vita.

- RROD and YLOD's.

Never had one of those, the people who have those are a tiny minority.

"centre" "bollocks" - high prices of games.

I take it you're in the UK a traditional bastion of anti-console rhetoric (thanks to the UK government protecting Sinclair from the likes of Nintendo, Sega, Sony), You might know know this but in the US, PC and console games are priced EXACTLY the same.

Re:Just make a PS4 VM.

[Highdude702]

Standby is not a full boot you run Linux you should know this. I run Windows to game because the game deva don't care about Linux yet hopefully steam changes that. Steam controller turns on the same way the ps4 and Xbox controllers do. But my steam controller links in about a quarter of a second which even surprised me when I got it. I'm an avid Linux user myself. And you know exactly what I was getting at. You just wanted to be argumentative

Re: Just make a PS4 VM.

[Shepanator]

That's not really true, the hardware in ps4 and Xbox one is highly customised, for instance Xbox one's APU has on die high speed dram, and the ps4 has an additional BUS that allows the gpu to directly address the cpu's L2 cache, to speed up gpu compute. There are many other differences as well if you care to look. If you wanted to run ps4/xb1 exclusive software on a pc you would need a very complicated software emulator and a powerful enough computer to overcome the missing hardware. Just because they are x86 doesn't mean that they're "pcs in a box" You can fit a porshe 911's engine into a vw camper, but does that make it a sports car? No.

Re:But the CPU

[GNious]

That's OK - According to ca every PC gamer I've met in the last 4-5 years, you can buy a PC with much more CPU power, much more GPU power, a lot more RAM, SSD storage and better everything else, for less than the cost of a (latest) Playstation.
Oddly enough, you don't even have to ask about it or anything - just mention that you have a console, and they'll explain the cost-advantage of owning a PC faster than a gluten-allergic vegan will say the word, "like".

Purchase the game. That's it.

[Neuronwelder]

I like the older days when you purchased a disk. You owned it. I don't care how good the brand new games are, If they are going in the direction of subscription it ends here.. Games like Witcher are fun,, Allen Wake was great. And as far as I can find on these games, you can play it on PC. Allen Wake 2 died before being delivered for some reason.. Sad..

Re:Streaming... so not using any of your PC power

[Calydor]

Who still uses 21" monitors for their computers?

PC Port...

[tofu2go]

Wish developers, including Sony-owned subsidiaries, would just port their PS exclusives to PC instead... I'd buy a PC port released on Steam or GOG, but not a PS Now subscription.

Re:Cool!

[CronoCloud]

The PS4 is already a FreeBSD box.

http://doc.dl.playstation.net/...

Where's the PS4 emulator?

[Dukenukemx]

I'm just sitting here waiting for a PS4 emulator for PC. Already have a somewhat working PS3 emulator called RPCS3. Also who enjoys cloud gaming? Communists, that's who!

Good call, Derekloffin.

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

Exactly as you said in comments here: https://games.slashdot.org/sto....

Re: Oh man finally! I totally wanted more lag and.

[Shepanator]

Guess what, they already offer all of the things you asked for, it's called a ps4