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PlayStation (Games) Sony Games Hardware

Sony Exercising Its Acquisition of GaiKai, Plans To Stream Games To PS4 129

dmfinn writes "With less than 5 days until the reported PS4 launch event, new details are emerging regarding some of the console's next-gen capabilities. Since last June, Sony has been quietly sitting on its $380 million dollar acquisition of Gaikai, a cloud based gaming company. The Wall Street Journal, among other sources, is now reporting that the PS4 will have GaiKai's cloud-based gaming technology directly integrated, thought it is unclear exactly what types of games will be available for streaming. Back in June, a rumor circulated that Sony was planning to use the technology to support backwards compatibility with PS2 and PS1 games, though no further details have arisen regarding whether or not the new console will be able to play previous generation games. It appears that Sony will most likely be using the service to stream PS3 and indie games to the console, as the current technology only supports 720p, not high enough quality for blockbuster games. Constantly streaming interactive graphics, even if only at 720p, will still require a fast internet connection. Services like OnLive have struggled in the past due to the large amount of bandwidth they require, and many consumers complained of laggy connections and horrendous graphics. There is no word yet regarding the features of the games being streamed, including whether or not they will support online or local multiplayer."
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Sony Exercising Its Acquisition of GaiKai, Plans To Stream Games To PS4

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  • by thetoadwarrior ( 1268702 ) on Saturday February 16, 2013 @06:47AM (#42920965) Homepage
    None of those old single player games were designed for lag and the vast majority of people just don't have the net connection for it. There's a reason online streaming of games went no where, it sucks.
    • Design for lag (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <.tepples. .at. .gmail.com.> on Saturday February 16, 2013 @07:00AM (#42921011) Homepage Journal

      None of those old single player games were designed for lag

      Games with a slower pace, such as anything that's not a bunny-hopping FPS or clickfest RTS, could probably be adapted to 100 ms control lag. In fact, rhythm games have had explicit lag settings in one form or another since Dance Dance Revolution Konamix on the original PlayStation to account for upscaler lag in the monitor.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Tachyons : The Returnening.

    These things are just seriously not useful for any game that requires twitch or even fast reactions.
    Other games, sure, fine.

    Of course, MP servers for those types of games would likely be killed to make space for new games, so local play (if it even exists) would be the only option, or self-hosted servers (again, if it even exists).
    I will still never know why these stupid companies won't let you rent a server with actual cash, they'd make quite a bit of money from it.

    • I will still never know why these stupid companies won't let you rent a server with actual cash, they'd make quite a bit of money from it.

      Because the amount of cash that one would be willing to pay to rent a server wouldn't be as big as the amount of cash if every player would buy the game's sequel.

      • Because the amount of cash that one would be willing to pay to rent a server wouldn't be as big as the amount of cash if every player would buy the game's sequel.

        Wow... why would one need to rent a server? Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines. Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.

        I guess in this age of corporate hypergreed we're not like

        • Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines.

          The Quake 1 era was before the era of a half-dozen or more devices behind a NAT.

          Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.

          Then explain why Internet hosting companies don't give a VPS away for free.

          I guess in this age of corporate hypergreed we're not likely to see gamers running their own servers again.

          It's not just game publishers' hypergreed as much as the combination of ISPs' hypergreed and ISPs' failure to deploy IPv6 to home users in a timely manner.

        • by Seumas ( 6865 )

          A lot of console games do not have servers hosted by the developer/publisher and they don't allow users to host the games on their own consoles. Or, rather, I should rephrase that -- the developer/publisher does host servers for the games -- but players have to pay a monthly fee to rent and run them. This is happening more often on PCs, too.

          In other words, they no longer give you the facilities to simply install and run your own servers. And, in many cases, to even rent servers from a third party. And they

        • Wow... why would one need to rent a server? Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines. Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.

          Monthly server costs can be pretty cheap, and for some games, you really do need a business-class server for smooth netplay. For example, I used to play a lot of Battlefield 2 - that's a game supporting up to 64 players (and that game only really came into its own with that many people playing). A lot of BF2 clans would have monthly membership dues to pay for server costs - I almost joined a couple of them, and they only wanted $8 per month from me. Considering that I played that game a good 100 hours a

  • I'm serious (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mike Frett ( 2811077 )

    Serious question, am I the only one that sees the end coming for these big name Consoles? I don't know much about what Nintendo is doing, but Sony and Microsoft seem to be trying to, almost Rape people.

    No used games, Massive DRM, Streaming, Lock-ins, Insane prices etc. These types of things are Bad, if they continue adding things that are Consumer unfriendly, I just can't see a future for these Companies.

    You got these Mini-Consoles popping up now, almost as if they are the next evolution in Consoles and alt

    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      You got these Mini-Consoles popping up now

      And if none of these mini-consoles happen to catch on, Sony and Nintendo still win. Case in point: None of the GP2X series consoles caught on among the general public, Pandora was far too delayed to catch on, and the nD appears to have been canceled.

      • If Ouya (for example) comes out on time and on budget, that will differentiate it from your other examples — perhaps significantly enough to permit it to sell.

        • True, the Pandora and nD failed to "come[] out on time and on budget". The original GP2X, GP2X Wiz, and GP2X Caanoo failed to gain professional developer support in the North American market despite "com[ing] out on time and on budget". What's to say Ouya won't fail just like GP2X?
          • Developer support for Ouya is not extreme, but quite nice - it's pretty much well-done Android, so there's little effort to port.
      • I take it you haven't seen the January sales figures of the WiiU, win seems to be the exact opposite of Nintendo's strategy.
    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Same for computers! Anyways, I stopped gaming and using these non-game softwares because of these craps. I will use others that don't do this. DRM FTL. Future sucks and not fun. :(

    • by collet ( 2632725 )

      Please learn sentence case.

    • by Xest ( 935314 )

      I think you're right if it's true.

      But I'm not overly convinced it is. All too many stories on Slashdot have overplayed the restrictiveness of some new form of DRM or some new console feature or whatever, and all too often they've been completely and utterly wrong - see the recent Office 2013 activation story for example, as I pointed out in TFA I know for a fact that one was wrong because i had a copy of Office 2013 that explicitly lets me work on multiple machines contrary to the story.

      Sometimes it gets it

    • by grumbel ( 592662 )

      Serious question, am I the only one that sees the end coming for these big name Consoles?

      Not unless they have serious competition. Steambox might provide that, but nobody knows when that will be out and what games it will run. It's also not clear if Steambox would get the developer support it needs with EA and Ubisoft trying to build up their own services with Origin and UPlay. So till Steambox it out, the big consoles are still the only way to get to get high end gaming experience that is user friendly and works on your TV.

      As for Ouya and friends, I don't think any serious gamer would like a s

  • copy-protection (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sarin ( 112173 ) on Saturday February 16, 2013 @07:40AM (#42921173) Homepage Journal

    they could use it for streaming the menus of certain games, so an essential part of the game is ran on their servers while the game itself resides on the console.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I very much suspect they plan to stream only parts of the game. You'd be missing an integral part (not only data as textures, but computations), which would make a pretty solid copy protection.

    I doubt they scream graphics, as you notice the lag. But I very much could assume they stream the AI, background sounds (music), cutscenes or generally execute scrips (quest progression etc) on a server. That is easily queueable and you'd not notice some lag of 100 ms.

    • We're not yet ready for a video stream only games, but beyond that you could stream everything. Just keep the game engine running locally and enough stuff cached in memory. Even today's consoles pull data constantly from optical disc, which has quite big latency times.
      • Even today's consoles pull data constantly from optical disc, which has quite big latency times.

        The difference here is that a Blu-ray Disc has 72 Mbps download speed and no monthly cap. Satellite Internet has a 10 GB per month cap (source: exede.com), which isn't even enough to transfer a 25 GB layer of a Blu-ray Disc in one month.

  • Sony screwed the pooch on their best franchise mark, EverQuest, with a lame PS2 version and no PS3 capability for Everquest II.

    With the 3rd (4th?) redevelopment of EverQuest Next in the wings, I wonder if this is supposed to somehow enable cross-platform functionality with the PS4 for EQ and other MMO's.

    Or is that to much vision to ask of SOE?

  • I bought my PS3 for $600+ (U.S.) it came bundled with the game
    "Metal Gear Solid 4" 6 actions to shoot POS.

    I had no use for the PS3 as I had gone to the PC for the CoD series but
    it was the last version to be backwards compatible and I have a lot of PS1, 2 games.

    My PC went down (had to replace the mother board) so I replayed my Ratchet and Clank
    "Up your Arsenal". When you break crates nuts and bolt fly towards Ratchet; a lot of
    crates and the PS3 emulator couldn't keep up with the graphics.

    I ended up repurchas

    • by CByrd17 ( 987455 )

      Let me get this straight, you spent hundreds of bucks to repurchase games that you owned because the backwards compatibility in your PS3 didn't work for one graphically intense portion of a PS2 game?

      I am in a similar situation and have not ever had a problem with PS3 rendering of PS2 games. However I have worried for a while about what will happen to my PS2 (PS1, too...although I really don't play those much anymore) collection when my PS3 inevitably reaches EOL. Recently I bought a new PC with a nice graph

      • As I mentioned I bought the PS3 due to it's backwards compatibility. It was a time I played
        a lot of single player PS2 games. Then my son took me to a PC "Call of Duty 2" lan party,
        the next month "Call of Duty 4" was released and I was hooked on this series.

        These two things happened at about the same time so !'ve never really used the PS3, other than
        streaming video and Netflix; I had moved my gaming to the PC.

        The Ratchet and Clank CD with the three PS2 versions cost less than $20 (U.S.)
        I've only bought two P

  • I'm thinking it might make it harder for cheating faggots to kiddy script hack these new ones? That and perhaps they will have established a more secure platform all around?

    LOL...who am I kidding? This is Sony! They have deep pockets to brute force their success in an almost "too big to fail" kind of way. They can afford to make retarded mistakes, so they shall! Sally forth with retardation, damn the torpedoes!

    • Perhaps you have not seen the news in a couple of years? Sony are in deep financial trouble, they have been liquidating assets and consolidating their business in an attempt to reign in their serious debt and profitability problems. The one thing Sony CAN'T do this time around is brute force success, they simply don't have the funding to bankroll a multi billion dollar loss leader as it could well send them bankrupt. What they do this time around must stand on its own or it is game over.
  • Anyone with half a brain will refuse to buy Sony again.

    They have made a relentless effort to be anti-consumer. Fuck them.

  • PS4 is too expensive if we compare it PC. But for sure both of them give very good quality gaming. tenaga dalam [energi-positif.net]

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