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PlayStation Now Streaming Service Available On Windows PCs (techcrunch.com) 54

Earlier this month, Sony announced PlayStation 3 games would be coming to Windows. Specifically, the company would be bringing its PlayStation Now game-streaming program to Windows PCs. Today, the service has officially launched and is available on Windows PCs. TechCrunch reports: "A 12-month subscription to PlayStation Now will run you $99.99 as part of a limited-time promotion to celebrate the PC launch. Normally, a PS Now subscription will run you more than double that. What does PlayStation Now actually provide? Access to a library of over 50 'Greatest Hits' games, which include popular titles like Mafia II, Tom Raider: GOTY edition, Borderlands and Heavy Rain. There's also over 100 console exclusives available to PC users for the first time, and a total library north of 400 games." If you're interested, you can download the app here. A USB adapter is set to go on sale September 6 that will allow you to use a DualShock 4 wireless controller with your PC.
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PlayStation Now Streaming Service Available On Windows PCs

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  • Anyone have a patch or crack. I can't find one on Astalavista.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @06:07PM (#52799787)
  • by Anonymous Coward

    There's got to be some lag, right? You want to shoot your gun, you press a button on the gamepad, a packet is sent to a server running the game, the server draws the next frame, then that frame has to be compressed and sent back to you, then decoded and displayed. How could this be done in 16 milliseconds or less? (the time allotted for 1 frame at 60 FPS) Even playing on-line games for the past 15 years, I've never seen latency lower than 30 ms on a server located in the same city. How could anyone enjo

    • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @08:00PM (#52800331)
      Since Onlive was in the news, I repost this every time streamed games come up because it's the best way I know to explain this kind of DRM:

      Imagine if the Ubisoft always-on DRM had been an inherent, unremoveable aspect of the game system rather than just something tacked on to a few individual games after the fact, such that Ubisoft couldn't even begrudgingly neuter it in a patch. Well, streamed games are even worse than that would be.

      The game doesn't even run locally. All you get is streaming video/audio and all the lag you'd expect (including controller lag), which is a recipe for disaster in North America.

      Let's say you're lucky enough to have a 30mb/s connection. Why would you want to use it to transfer your game's video instead of, uh, a DVI cable, which is capable of 4 Gb/s? The people who developed DVI apparently understood that that 1920 x 1200 pixels w/ 24 bits/pixels @ 60Hz results in bandwidth well over 3 Gb/s. The people who push streamed gaming seem very, very confused (at best).

      Some people consider IPS monitors unsuitable for games requiring fast reflexes (i.e. FPSes) due to their double-digit response times. Internet latency is often worse and certainly more unpredictable than LCD monitor response time, and with streamed games it applies to audio and keyboard/controller/etc input too.

      Those of us who know anything about bandwidth and compression and (especially) latency can see the enormous technical obstacles facing a service like this, and I've never heard anyone explain how they intend to solve them. Onlive (for example) did everything they could to lock out independent reviewers with NDAs and closed demonstrations. A friend of mine described it as the gaming equivalent of the perpetual motion scam, and IMO that's spot on (except that streaming would still have the draconian DRM issues even if it worked perfectly).

      Streamed gaming appears designed from the ground up to benefit the game publishers and fuck the customers, exactly as you'd expect from any DRM system.
      • So you're saying the game is running in the cloud and not on the PC? I didn't catch that when I read the story and it sounds like a nightmare.
      • Some games could work that way. But it cuts out the adrenaline junky twitch FPS games. It also cuts out the modern style Quick-Time-Event games (like Dragon's Lair but dumber). But it could work for exactly the sorts of games you will never see on a dumbed down console: turn based RPG, strategy, adventure, etc.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by youngone ( 975102 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @06:43PM (#52799943)
    As a Steam user, why would I want this? Just another epic Sony fail.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    https://github.com/nefarius/ScpToolkit

    Why buy the proprietary Bluetooth® adapter, when you can just use almost any regular adapter, and pair up multiple PS3 and PS4 controllers?

  • I'll give it a shot. Sounds like a really good deal. Lots of good games in the package.
  • Never heard of him.
  • As usual, "Service not available in your country/region"

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