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PlayStation (Games) Windows Games

PlayStation 3 Games Are Coming To PC (cnet.com) 125

Posted by msmash from the console-wars-be-damned dept.
PlayStation 3 games are coming to Windows. Sony said Tuesday that it is bringing its PlayStation Now game-streaming program to Windows PCs. The service broadcasts PlayStation 3 games over the internet similar to the way Netflix beams movies to devices like Roku. CNET reports: This fall, you'll be able to play previously exclusive games like Uncharted 3 and Shadow of the Colossus on a Windows laptop. The catch: you'll be playing those games over the internet with Sony's streaming game service, PlayStation Now. Think Netflix. PlayStation Now has already been around for a couple of years on the PS4, PS3, PS Vita handheld, plus a handful of Blu-ray players and smart TVs. For $20 a month or $45 for three, the service gives players unlimited access to a long list of over 400 PlayStation 3 games. Like Netflix or any other streaming service, the quality can vary wildly depending on your internet connection -- Sony requires a solid 5Mbps connection at all times, and that doesn't change today. What changes is the size of Sony's audience. With a Windows laptop or tablet, you aren't tethered to a big-screen TV. You could theoretically take these PlayStation games anywhere -- and wherever you go, your save games stream with you.
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PlayStation 3 Games Are Coming To PC

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  • Laptop? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why would you say "Windows **LAPTOP**"??

    Is my desktop not allowed?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Millennials are afraid of being tethered to a screen. Says in the summary.

      • But it's a *BIG* screen. And I can view it while sitting on a nice comfy couch. It's also connected to a fantastic audio system with really good speakers. Why in the world would I *PAY MONEY* to:

        - play games on a smaller screen
        - connected to tinny little speakers
        - while sitting on an uncomfortable seat while riding the bus?

    • Re:Laptop? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Megol ( 3135005 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @03:45PM (#52757747)

      Didn't you read the memo? Desktop computers are dead, please recycle yours as soon as possible. Then buy the future: Tablet computers! Think of all the excitement of Windows computing only just without mouse or keyboard and other legacy devices - the finger is the new stylus! Just think of the possibilities for developers where squiggling ones finger in a random pattern just may create the perfect code! And it doesn't end there - why use cumbersome legacy programs for creating art when the finger touching cool new apps can do it! And wouldn't it be really nice if one could do some work while calming a screaming baby? With a tablet computer you can - just don't hit the baby too hard, the tablet may break.

      Ehum...

      • Didn't you read the memo? Desktop computers are dead, please recycle yours as soon as possible. ...

        No, I won't. 8-{
        "F=IW"

        |
        v

  • thats cool (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Thats cool.... until they turn the service off eventually.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      well when that happens you wont pay anymore will you

      20 bucks a month for unlimited access doesnt sound bad, as long as you understand you are not buying these games

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sims 2 ( 994794 )

        Oh it's an unlimited service?!
        I thought it was a service to let you play games you owned on a crappy computer that isn't powerful enough to run the games.

  • I would rather see them add RemotePlay support to PC; it works great on the PS4 the PS3 already supports it to the PS Vita; let me do the same to the PC.

    • Never gonna happen with the old hardware. There's no processing power

      • I could remote play on my Sony phone. I think a five year old PC will do the job. The five year old PC will likely have more power than an PS4.

    • i wouldn't call a max resolution of 720p as 'it works great'. Its ok, but a vastly inferior experience to running it natively.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      I would rather see them produce a high performance 3D playstation video card (et al), that you could load up on Linux PC. High performance elements only available for licensed games and regular performance for everything else ie FOSS software like Libre Office etc. Windows done and finished at consumer level. So what if is hacked and produces high performance for everything, they'll still sell more games (OS issues after all).

  • At Gamescon Sony announced they have two successors to the PS4 coming this fall.

    So licensing Windows versions of their older PS3 games right before they make the PS4 the "old" version of the console makes a lot of sense.

    It's a new console setup, so most of the PS3 games would take massive reworking to function on the successor consoles.

  • Input on a Windows tablet? (Score:5, Informative)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @03:38PM (#52757693) Homepage Journal

    "With a Windows laptop or tablet, you aren't tethered to a big-screen TV. You could theoretically take these PlayStation games anywhere"

    The article says it requires a DualShock 4 controller. I don't see how that will work with all Windows tablets, especially seeing as ARM-based Windows tablets (like the Surface 1 and 2 non-Pro) allow only XInput controllers (that is, Xbox 360 controllers and one Logitech model).

    • "With a Windows laptop or tablet, you aren't tethered to a big-screen TV. You could theoretically take these PlayStation games anywhere"

      The article says it requires a DualShock 4 controller. I don't see how that will work with all Windows tablets, especially seeing as ARM-based Windows tablets (like the Surface 1 and 2 non-Pro) allow only XInput controllers (that is, Xbox 360 controllers and one Logitech model).

      Sony also announced today a USB dongle for Mac and Windows that permits wireless DS4 connections. Assuming the tablet has a USB port you could presumably use that (although as of yet there is no word if it requires any special drivers or not).

      Yaz

      • Sony also announced today a USB dongle for Mac and Windows that permits wireless DS4 connections. Assuming the tablet has a USB port you could presumably use that (although as of yet there is no word if it requires any special drivers or not).

        This is actually the most interesting thing they've had to say, then. Sony has always made excellent controllers.

  • "Windows exclusive" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LichtSpektren ( 4201985 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @03:42PM (#52757729)
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though this streaming service doesn't use the GPU or any of its corresponding APIs; it mentions the only requirements being a fast CPU and fast enough Internet connection.

    That being the case, why the hell is this Windows exclusive? Why not open it to Macs and desktop Linux?

    • Because everyone hates Macs and Linux even though Windows sucks too, it's just the default gaming OS.... ;)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      That being the case, why the hell is this Windows exclusive? Why not open it to Macs and desktop Linux?

      Do you really have to ask? DRM.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That being the case, why the hell is this Windows exclusive? Why not open it to Macs and desktop Linux?

        Do you really have to ask? DRM.

        What could they possibly be DRM-ing? It streams the games from Sony's servers, so basically you send button presses to their servers and they send a video stream back. They're not actually streaming the software to your computer.

        Okay, so they're locking the video stream with DRM, to what end? I seriously can't think of any use case where that would matter in the slightest if someone cracked it.

    • Three words:
      Digital
      Rights
      Massacre

    • That being the case, why the hell is this Windows exclusive? Why not open it to Macs and desktop Linux?

      A Sony rep mentioned on the PlayStation Blog today that they were evaluating Mac support. Obviously they can do it, because they are already doing it withPS4 Remote Play for Mac (interesting side note: the PS4 Remote Play for Mac app is significantly smaller than the Windows version. One of these days I'm meaning to look into why this is).

      Yaz

  • Rather just use the PS3 disks I already have and not need the internet connection at all except for updates....

    No sale

    • Rather just use the PS3 disks I already have and not need the internet connection at all except for updates....

      Oh so you don't want to pay $20 for something you already own? Maybe, just maybe this is targeted at consumers that do not already own a PS3 and a game library for it?

      • Your mind and view are way too narrow....

        • Your mind and view are way too narrow....

          Lol? You are the guy that can't seem to wrap his head around this new fangled "cloud computing" thing that the kids are all talking about these days.

          • Good little consumer sheep. Pay your corporate masters again for something you already have...

            • Good little consumer sheep. Pay your corporate masters again for something you already have...

              OMFG were you dropped as a child? That's the whole point of my first post.

              Maybe, just maybe this is targeted at consumers that do not already own a PS3 and a game library for it.

              I mean really this thing is called a THREAD there are other posts you might have to read if you want to intelligently respond to others.

  • Screw this shit. 99% of PC games are already console games, ported. Stupid button-mashing idiocy.

    Who the hell is sitting in design rooms slamming their fists on the table demanding people switch buttons to mash every second, half-second, quarter second? Faster faster faster! Mash, switch, mash!

  • Just what I wanted.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by epyT-R ( 613989 ) on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @03:56PM (#52757825)

    Heavily compressed mpeg streams of last gen ps3 graphics and 100ms+ lag on controls.. I'll pass.

    • 5 Mbps is what Netflix uses for its highest-quality 1080p streams. For a movie file analogy, 5 Mbps is equivalent to 2.25 GB for a 1 hour movie. The compression is there if you really look for it, but most people won't notice it. (Current video compression algorithms have a hard time with sharp high-contrast changes since those are relatively rare in natural video images, but are common in computer-generated images. So that's an area of video compression which could be improved in future algorithms.)

      • 5 Mbps is what Netflix uses for its highest-quality 1080p streams. For a movie file analogy, 5 Mbps is equivalent to 2.25 GB for a 1 hour movie. The compression is there if you really look for it, but most people won't notice it.

        Movies have a natural advantage of either having very little motion or having a lot of motion blur. There are exceptions (Children of Men) but for most of them this is the case, so a low bitrate can work if you have a lot of time to encode it.

        Games tend to have a lot more motion and a lot less motion blur. And this service won't be able to use good encoder settings -- it'll need to use a real-time hardware codec, which significantly limits is quality. You might say I'm skeptical.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        Have you actually looked at so-called HD 1080p mpeg streams? Unless a very high bitrate is used, it looks terrible compared to locally rendered graphics. Also console games are 60p (well they strive for it). TV is half of that at best. Most people do notice. They just don't care if the latest cat meme. They will care when their games show up as a mess of macroblocked garbage every time they pan, scroll, or do anything that requires an instantaneous full screen update.

        No, the lag is caused by the network an

      • 5 Mbps is what Netflix uses for its highest-quality 1080p streams.

        I've used NVidia's Geoforce Now streaming service, and it pulls over 50Mbps for a 1080p game (but I guess PS3 games aren't 1080p).

    • I knew there would be a comment about this, and you are right. For very quick games, especially multi-player, this would be detrimental.

      However, I like to play turn-based strategy games. So, the minimal latency isn't really a problem. And, this opens up a big library of games that I didn't have access to before.

      In addition, rhythm games like Rock Band already allow you to adjust for latency. So, theoretically they would work fine too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        Well, great, but the majority of console titles are not turn based strategy.. They're FPS and action titles. You can only compensate for latency just so much.. You can 'hide' it with client side prediction (which can introduce other playability problems), but at best you'll only approach the minimum pkt latency of the network, plus any additional buffering done to the audio/video itself. Something like rockband is a simplistic model where the input needs syncing with an existing, known timebase (recorded m

  • I presume that's in USD as well, so paying $180 US ($240CDN) per year to *not* own any games vs me picking up a used PS3 on Craigslist for $100CDN and then buying used games at $5-$15 per game, I just don't see the value proposition here.

    • I presume that's in USD as well, so paying $180 US ($240CDN) per year to *not* own any games vs me picking up a used PS3 on Craigslist for $100CDN and then buying used games at $5-$15 per game, I just don't see the value proposition here.

      Can't disagree with you there, but I do think you're underestimating the target audience's laziness.
    • Couldn't you same the same thing about a cheap DVD player and used DVDs? I think they're $1 a piece now. Yet people still get netflix.

      I mean I'm just assuming that's Sony's thought process. I don't actually know. If the my LAN streaming of Steam games is any indicator it won't be quite the Netflix-for-games experience the summary implies. I do have a jumbo wrap-around bluetooth gamepad [amazon.com] and a couple different Windows tablets (HP Stream 7, for instance) but I'm just assuming the 802.11g and/or my router wou

      • Impressive, if not very pretty gamepad. But it may be adding a small amount of latency?
        You're not using a high latency TV, at least.
        But what if you were using a high latency TV. What if you were using DSL (personal rule of thumb, at least twice the latency of cable)
        Using Wifi? You're doing that (you should be using wired ethernet, at worst it's possible on USB-to-go Android stuff)
        What if you were using Wifi, then streaming through Wifi again to a wireless TV or TV stick? It's dumb but people will do that i

      • > Couldn't you same the same thing about a cheap DVD player and used DVDs

        Not really no. When you play a game you're going to spend dozens of hours playing it (if it's a good game you like), whereas once you watch a movie in a couple of hours you're done with it. Netflix's strength is that you're going to blast through a few movies a week and then go on to other things, whereas with a game system you'll play a game or two that month and then will play them again some other time. So there's more value wi

    • The only way I could see this making sense is if you wanted to be able to play those games on the go on a Vita, but then a) you would have to have good WiFi, which you aren't likely to have on the go (while there is a 3G model, the speed is almost surely inadequate and the cost would be high); b) the price is too high to justify it; and c) reports are it doesn't work well enough anyways.

      Plus the library of available games is pretty poor (IMO). It's a wonder anyone is using the service such that it's still o

    • I just don't see the value proposition here.

      They're selling the illusion of choice.

      Most people will spend hours playing their favorite handful of games every month, and they would be better off buying the system and those games outright.

      But with the subscription, they have the appearance of choice with those 400+ titles. If they never exercise that choice, well, Sony won't complain.

      I can see a good point in subscribing for a month or two each year to try things out and decide what to buy. It's notoriously difficult to return unwanted games/software a

  • http://rpcs3.net/ [rpcs3.net]

    https://esxemulator.com/ [esxemulator.com]

    ESX really works. You need a BEEFY system, though.

  • I can't imagine they have hundreds of PS3s sitting in a datacenter to run this service. If this is running on an emulator on Xeons on in a datacenter, why don't they just sell emulated PS3 games to run directly on Windows and/or the PS4? I suppose they could have a datacenter full of rackmount Cell boxes which would be a little more interesting.

    • DRM

    • They might want to run PS4 games eventually, but it's too early for several reasons including competition with themselves or overall crappiness compared to local hardware, for reasons.
      I'm sure they use straight PS3 hardware?, with the shrink to 45nm CPU + 40nm GPU. Fairly wasteful in performance per watt but emulation could be worse. You don't even need the case and optical drive, and the hardware is available in extremely high numbers for basically free. 4TB 2.5" HDD are a thing (or 2TB if addressing limit

    • Actually, they *DO* have a datacenter full of PS3s to run this on.... And, they're all release-date PS3s running OtherOS!
    • I'd guess that the PS3 emulator they use only works with very specific hardware, designed to emulate a PS3, maybe even using the same cell architecture.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shione ( 666388 )

      The arcades are coming back but instead of paying per game you pay per month and instead of them supplying the machines, electricity etc, you do.

  • Broadcast used to mean Broadcast in te olde Slashdot!

  • And we all remember ho well OnLive worked

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