Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PlayStation Now Is Making Its Games Downloadable (kotaku.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the it's-about-time dept.

PlayStation revealed in a blog post that PS Now subscribers will be able to download most PS4 and PS2 games currently in the PS Now Library and play them locally, offline. "Almost all PS4 games in the service, including Bloodborne, God of War 3 Remastered, NBA 2K16, and Until Dawn, will be available for download, in addition to the PS Now lineup of classic PS2 games remastered for PS4," the announcement reads. "This feature will be gradually rolled out to PS Now subscribers over the next couple of days, so if you don't see the feature on your PS Now today, make sure to check back again soon." Kotaku reports: While being connected to the internet isn't required to play PS Now games once they've been downloaded, the support page says your system will have to go online "every few days" in order to validate the PS Now subscription. In the past, PS Now had been exclusively for streaming games to your PS4. When it was announced in 2014, it was building off of Sony's 2012 acquisition of the Gaikai video game streaming service. While it offered a way for people to play older games on the newer console (since, unlike Xbox One, the PS4 isn't backwards compatible), it was hardly ideal due to problems with latency and its reliance on a consistently strong internet connection. Honestly, the only surprise here is that Sony didn't make this move sooner.

32 comments

  1. Does it simplify rips? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Once it's downloaded to a HDD, can one just pull HDD out and publish the game for the ones with a cracked console?

    1. Re:Does it simplify rips? by AC-x · · Score: 1

      Or just rip the blu-ray disc..?

  2. Well, that's logical DMR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Those downloaded games will play only with a particular user account. Any other log-in won't be able to play such downloaded games. DMR.

    1. Re:Well, that's logical DMR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those downloaded games will play only with a particular user account. Any other log-in won't be able to play such downloaded games. DMR.

      I mean isn't that just but a temporary setback? Someone will crack the downloaded game and then everyoe can play it.

    2. Re: Well, that's logical DMR by PhYrE2k2 · · Score: 1

      PlayStation 4 hasnâ(TM)t had too many problems with piracy especially as most games have a huge online component. Theyâ(TM)ve made it impractical to pirate games in their ecosystem. Possible, yes, but any online use and youâ(TM)re using the latest vanilla operating system.

      --

      when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
  3. Remember, it's only bad if Nintendo does it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nintendo only has stupid kiddy games like Mario, so it's bad if they have required check-ins. Sony has REAL games, so this is perfectly fine!

  4. Countdown to by dnaumov · · Score: 1

    this feature getting immidiately yanked as soon as the DRM is cracked.

    On a sidenote: will this finally allow resolutions higher than 720p?

  5. Sony and Malware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Given what they did with compact disks, how can you trust them with your systems?

    1. Re:Sony and Malware by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

      how can you trust them with your systems?

      Considering that you would need to buy Sony hardware to play Playstation games at all, I think we're a bit past that point. If you didn't trust them, why the hell would you buy a PS# in the first place, especially when you know that it's not open hardware.

    2. Re: Sony and Malware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I played PS games on my computer 15 years ago via emulator. No need to buy their hardware

  6. Bonus for armed forces by grilled-cheese · · Score: 1

    This is a big help to those who go on extended periods where internet access is limited/unavailable such as active duty military personnel.

    1. Re:Bonus for armed forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do not think this will help much. You will still have to connect every few days.

      "However when playing a downloaded game, you’ll need to connect to PSN every few days to validate your PS Now subscription and maintain your access to the game."

    2. Re:Bonus for armed forces by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      Considering you have to connect to internet every few days it is still useless in that situation.

    3. Re:Bonus for armed forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering you have to connect to internet every few days it is still useless in that situation.

      When our armed forces are deployed somewhere with zero internet access, they have more important things to do like physical training, clean their weapons, dig holes, fill sandbags, fill holes, patrols, and jerking off. They’re lucky to even have a TV in that event, so bring a damned gameboy or switch. Better idea, you mail them yours and stop complaining about first world problems.

    4. Re:Bonus for armed forces by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      learn to read moron, I wasn't complaining or suggesting it would be good, merely pointing out it would still be useless for that scenario, FFS learn to read before commenting.

  7. But do I get to *keep* them? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And I don't mean Steam-style "Here is a safe. We promise the game is inside. But we keep the key. You will always have access to it though. At least until we go bankrupt, get bought, a server dies, our business interests change, or whatever the mood of the day is tomorrow.”

    I mean just like the data on a standard physical medium before the cokeheads decided they could steal our money by claiming they worked hard for mere copies and therefore were entitled to get actual money for them. (I should make copies of my money [with "specimen" across], call them up, and demand them to work another n days each time I give them m of my funny money, or sue them for "rape, murder and plunder on the high seas" and "theft". After all, I worked hard for that original bill of 100 EUR too, that has absolutely nothing to do with the worthlessness of a mere copy of said bill.)

    1. Re:But do I get to *keep* them? by 110010001000 · · Score: 1, Troll

      No. Once you stop paying your monthly fee (or the service goes out of business) all access to the content will be revoked. That is the new model going forward for computing: pay monthly or lose access to software.

    2. Re:But do I get to *keep* them? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. Once you stop paying your monthly fee (or the service goes out of business) all access to the content will be revoked. That is the new model going forward for computing: pay monthly or lose access to software.

      New?

      That never went away.

      The whole period of time where “every family and employee will have a personal computer and we will do all our business on it” is already over for a while now and will be shorter than a gnat’s dick in the long run of computing history.

      For example, accountants don’t reach for Access 2018 to solve today’s problems on their computer, the business hires ivory tower Java or C# developers. Microsoft rolled over, Visual Basic, office macros, and the whole concept of business user solving problems with their own computer is still there... but ten feet under.

    3. Re:But do I get to *keep* them? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      These are rented games from Playstation Now. It's a STREAMING SERVICE. Asking if you can keep them makes as much sense as asking if you get to keep your rental movies. No, of course not.

      You always have the option of simply *buying* your games, either with a disc or a download, and playing them as long as you own a PS4. The drama here is a little over the top. No, I don't like this new rental model either, so I don't subscribe to it. The moment I can't actually buy titles is the day I give up consoles and become an exclusive PC gamer.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  8. Imagine by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 4, Interesting

    [...] the support page says your system will have to go online "every few days" in order to validate the PS Now subscription.

    What if others picked up on this?

    What if when you get in your car, and turn your key, it had to check to make sure that you were current on your car note payment, that you had insurance, and why not, fuck it... a valid driver's license, before the engine would even turn over?

    What if your refrigerator and pantry every so often would refuse to open until you stepped, barefoot, onto your wired, internet-connected bathroom scale, which would verify with the near-field-communications chip you had surgically implanted in your feet that you're the one being weighed, to ensure you haven't put on too much weight?

    What if whenever you turn on a light in your house, or a water tap, the house calls the utility which does a check to make sure your payment method is still valid?

    What if every time you swiped your credit card, the Point-of-Sale terminal or cash register, in addition to requesting authorization for the specific charge, ALSO did a soft-credit-pull to make sure you weren't a deadbeat, and that you pay your bills? What if they ran your name against a list of people who use stuff and return it an unusually high amount of the time, and declines the charge if you do that too often? OR, what if they just insist you sign an acknowledgement that all sales (for you) are final, telling you that you can buy something, but you're not going to be able to return it?

    Every bit of this shit we put up with will only encourage the proliferation of this bad idea. I reject this out of hand; it's why I buy games on GOG.com, and not Steam or PSN... I don't want or need a game that comes with DRM, (or most anything else, for that matter,) especially if it's going to PHONE HOME periodically to make sure it's okay to run. You all can do as you like, but I won't support this.

    Even if you think, "I agree, I'm not supporting this either, I only play cracked games..." you still bought the console itself, right? Even if they're selling it at a loss, the fact that you bought one helps bump up their numbers that they can claim they've sold without obviously lying, which helps convince others to invest in that platform by buying their consoles, (and usually games as well,) and then on top of that is the fact that your ownership of an instance of the console is always going to present a temptation to buy a game, especially if you REALLY want to play it and you can't find a cracked copy... the console itself acts as a vector for temptation to get you to reward them for putting "phones home" DRM on games. You're obviously not helping them as much as if you just bought the console and the games legitimately, and also in so-doing you are exposing yourself to legal liability just about the same as if you tried to slip a boxed game at a store down your pants and slink out with it, hoping to be unnoticed, which is really silly.

    (As an aside, I wonder if anyone's ever tried the Attractive Nuisance defense against charges of "pirating" music, movies, TV shows, books or games?)

    --
    Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
    1. Re:Imagine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "What if when you get in your car, and turn your key, it had to check to make sure that you were current on your car note payment, that you had insurance, and why not, fuck it... a valid driver's license, before the engine would even turn over?"

      Didn't at least one car company mull this over already? Could have sworn I read an article about it on here in the past. Although the only thing I can see in searches right now is a plan by one electric car company to force a rental contract of sorts by applying DRM to the car battery so they can prevent it from charging if they so feel like it.

    2. Re:Imagine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're renting the games, not buying them. That's the whole point. You think they're going to let you grab them and delete them at the end of the month on the honor system?

      I'm laughing that they're doing what MS proposed to do at the start of the gen.

    3. Re:Imagine by AC-x · · Score: 1

      What if others picked up on this?

      What, you mean like instead of paying for individual audio CDs you could pay a flat monthly fee and listen to anything you like?

      Or instead of paying for individual movie DVDs or TV show boxsets you could pay a flat monthly fee and watch anything you like?

    4. Re:Imagine by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      So, to be clear, you're saying that shouldn't have to use your key to start your car? I mean, you bought and paid for it, you shouldn't have to validate yourself to it every time you want to use it, right?

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    5. Re:Imagine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every bit of this shit we put up with will only encourage the proliferation of this bad idea.

      No. Subscription services for entertainment is a great idea. Content creators get paid and for the price of buying a license for a movie each month I just pay the subscription fee and I can watch whatever I want. Having that for music, movies, TV and now games is awesome.

    6. Re:Imagine by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 1

      What if others picked up on this?

      What, you mean like instead of paying for individual audio CDs you could pay a flat monthly fee and listen to anything you like?

      Or instead of paying for individual movie DVDs or TV show boxsets you could pay a flat monthly fee and watch anything you like?

      That's not really what I was talking about. Streaming something for a flat monthly fee is the cable-TV model of buying entertainment, applied to what used to be (and still is, though once upon a time it was the only game in town, especially if you want portability,) broadcast over FM radio.

      What we're talking about is when you BUY a COPY of something, and it's DRMed so you can only play it on THEIR equipment and/or it has to phone home, NOT to get information needed for playing the media, but to get PERMISSION.

      Streaming media is NOT the same thing as... look, here's one more metaphor.

      Suppose you bought a dead-tree paper book. It's a book. A book. A thousands-of-years-old-technology, technically, BOOK, in that it's some number of sheets of flat, foldable or rollable or bound-along-one-edge-pieces of durable flat material, (durable at least compared to say, writing on a flour tortilla, for example,) with marks made on it, probably with some kind of dye-carrying liquid, ink or paint, or perhaps traces of graphite, or something similar, or something made to resemble such marks. Now... you buy one and you own THAT copy of THAT book. Suppose somehow, though, that the one YOU bought has magic powers, such that all the pages appear BLANK inside until it telepathically communicated with the seller the identity of who's trying to read it, (you,) to make SURE that you are the person THAT copy were sold to?

      I know this is getting silly, but to me, not having to worry about losing the ability to listen to, watch, read, etc., what I buy because someone ELSE decides they don't want me to be able to, or they go out of business or whatever, is important.

      See, some people don't want to stream things. Some people aren't just going to ASSUME that whatever I might want to hear is always going to be available, accessible, and, oh, what if I don't have broadband internet access at some point if I travel somewhere? Or if net-neutrality gets undone and suddenly your ISP wants you to pay not a monthly fee with a cap, but per kilobyte?

      I know it's old-fashioned, nowadays, but I still have a CD collection, and a DVD collection, and a Blueray disc collection that one of these days I'm going to replace with DVDs because I've decided it was pointless and stupid to "upgrade" to Blueray, since on MY TV, and likely any TV I'm going to have for a long time doesn't display pictures or play sound meaningfully better than what's on a DVD anyway, and I don't have to worry about some new DVD movie demanding I update my player with cryptographic variables so it can decode the damned movie, unlike some formats and technologies I could mention COUGHbluerayCOUGH COUGH... also, for the nearterm, at least, they're still making DVDs, and even if they stop, I'm pretty sure enough DVDs have been produced now that I could never watch them all if I had nothing to do for the rest of my natural life but watch fucking movies... so... yeah.

      When I was a kid and had cassette tapes with all my music on them, and a small CD collection, and my father listened to his vinyl 45's and 78's, or his reel-to-reel tape copies of the same, (to keep from wearing out the grooves or cocking up the needles, since they were getting hard to find, or expensive or both,) I used to think it was funny, laughably old-fashioned, but you know what? It worked. And his old Teac A-6300 (IIRC) didn't ever phone home to ask PERMISSION to play a tape. Every so often he'd clean the heads with a q-tip, and then he'd put on a reel, wind the tape under the tensioner, across the head, up and around, the other reel, and press play. It would make this satisfying noise I can't

      --
      Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
    7. Re:Imagine by AC-x · · Score: 1

      YOU may stream whatever you like, and I respect your decision to do that. But that's apples, and we're talking about ORANGES here, friend. I'm talking about Sony making, (I'm suddenly struggling to remember the particulars of this story...) Playstation games downloadable, but in such a way, IIRC, that you can only play them if the console can verify that you're allowed to play them.

      It sounds like you didn't pay attention to the story the first time either, because we're talking about PlayStation Now here. A subscription service where you pay monthly to access a library of streamable games for no extra cost. That you can also now download and play offline.

    8. Re:Imagine by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 1

      YOU may stream whatever you like, and I respect your decision to do that. But that's apples, and we're talking about ORANGES here, friend. I'm talking about Sony making, (I'm suddenly struggling to remember the particulars of this story...) Playstation games downloadable, but in such a way, IIRC, that you can only play them if the console can verify that you're allowed to play them.

      It sounds like you didn't pay attention to the story the first time either, because we're talking about PlayStation Now here. A subscription service where you pay monthly to access a library of streamable games for no extra cost. That you can also now download and play offline.

      No, I read it, and I know that we’re talking about Sony and their Playstation. I was making analogies, and yeah, I may have made a hard left, gone offroading, and strayed WAY off into the weeds with that one, but I didn’t actually, IMHO, go completely off a cliff.

      It’s just kind of my style. If I ever right an autobiography, it’ll start with, “I was born in a little town called, ... wait, let me back up a bit and tell you one other thing first that you’ll need to know first, in order to know, I mean to really and truly understand, to grok, as Robert Heinlein would have perhaps put it, what I’m talking about here,” and the rest of the book will be a nested, recursive, 700+ page digression.

      --
      Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
  9. Sony can kiss my ass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You had me until "If I stop paying, or Sony turns it off because they can, I can't access the content I have *purchased*" - if I summarise what has been said correctly.

    Here's a better idea, order up:
    - Raspberry PI (and associated bits) ~$50 with shipping (thank you Ali Express)
    - 8GB microSD - ~$8
    - 1TB USB HDD ~$80 (or buy a USB-SATA Adapter from Ali Express for $5 with shipping, and scrounge a drive from a retired laptop)
    - Xbox 360 Controller with Wireless USB dongle ~$50

    Considering the entire USA release of PS1 Games is about 550GB, that leaves lots of room for other alternate ROM sets. Configure RetroArch on to the PI and a bit of scripting to mount the USB drive. All easy to do, instructions can be googled and roms/iso downloaded if you know where to look. Also, with tweaking RetroArch will upscale the graphics to HD, not some pissy 720p BS.

    More games that you can every play in a lifetime, that are there forever and does not have to phone home to "validate".

    Sony, get this through your head: if you make it hard, overprice it, or fuck people over with arbitrary "phone home" requirements, they will look for alternatives. This is one that is quite easy to do with a moderate amount of technical know-how.

    1. Re:Sony can kiss my ass. by AC-x · · Score: 2

      You had me until "If I stop paying, or Sony turns it off because they can, I can't access the content I have *purchased*"

      You probably should have carried on listening, because this doesn't apply to anything you *purchased*. It's only for their Netflix-style subscription service where you pay monthly and can then stream (and now download) any game in their subscription library for "free" (i.e. no additional cost).

  10. i dont think so... by dougdonovan · · Score: 1

    i have been d/l playstation for 3 years...

  11. All crap ps1,2 games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No Gran Turismo or Crash Bandicoot.