StrickenBiged Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 (edited) I was just reading something about Playstation now, when a thought hit me... If all the processing which actually produces the game experience is handled by remote servers, and all the PS4 is effectively doing is throwing the resulting images to the screen and relaying controller inputs, then if we upgrade the servers we could run better games via the existing PS4 hardware. Ok, at the moment PS Now is in closed beta and is limited to PS3 games and below. And admittedly, as the screen resolution continues to increase people's bandwith and internet speeds will need to increase too, (but we're catching up here - House of Cards Season 2 was recently released at 4k resolutions for those who had the right TVs and a strong enough connection) but if the PS Now experiment works then in theory the PS4 could be the last console you ever need. What if the next generation is not an upgrade to the box which sits below your television set, but an upgrade to the servers that power PS Now? If all the processing is taking place at some server warehouse rather than in your living room, then the PS5 could just be an upgrade at the server level, and the PS4 might be the last piece of hardware you ever need to own... Woah... Discuss. Edited July 8, 2014 by StrickenBiged Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amebapiko Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 The last and only thing you need is a PC 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willstown Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Could be the way things go, very reliant on countries having a great reliable & fast network infrastructure and broadband availability. So good for northern Europe / Japan, not so great for some parts of the US / Africa (from what I've heard of pricing and average speed). It's totally reliant on countries investing in their networks though. Point of sale stuff would more likely be disks or something similar to allow basic access so retails are still about and we still get some sort of market competition. I would think we'll end up with some sort of PS TV type devices delivering our content eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Memnoch Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 you don't even need a ps4 in that case Internet is nowhere near where it needs to be for high def gaming, and you have all sorts of input lag. ISP's would make big money as they could create 'gaming offers' where you get less bottleneck than a usual connection. Can't see it happening in the close future in any case Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_Bee Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Not only that, but game prices would have to go up. If no money can be made back from selling consoles (even if they sell at a loss, they get some return), the money needs to be made elsewhere. Game companies get nothing from the ISP (who would also make a lot more money), so they will have to get that money from games, the only thing that they sell anymore. Even then, you would need to upgrade the console at this end at some point. As the resolution improves, you need different connections to handle the display. Even if the servers are doing the heavy lifting, there will still be work left for the ps4 to do, and eventually it would become more than the system can handle. As for the statement about only needing a PC. That doesn't work either for the same reason. You will need to upgrade your machine, because it would not be able to keep up. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 The last and only thing you need is a PC Which would need upgrading from time to time and piece by piece to play more power hungry games. Unless you mean that you're accessing PS Now on your PC? Could be the way things go, very reliant on countries having a great reliable & fast network infrastructure and broadband availability. So good for northern Europe / Japan, not so great for some parts of the US / Africa (from what I've heard of pricing and average speed). It's totally reliant on countries investing in their networks though. Point of sale stuff would more likely be disks or something similar to allow basic access so retails are still about and we still get some sort of market competition. I would think we'll end up with some sort of PS TV type devices delivering our content eventually. Yeah, I am assuming that you've got a good connection going both ways and that the server is located near enough to you that the latency is low. And we shouldn't assume that the connection speeds we experience now are not going to increase. Why would we need physical media, point of sale stuff? As far as I understand it, you only need to install the PS Now app to access the available games. Or do you mean that the disk would be akin to a "key" which allowed you to stream the game without having a rental period or subscription to PS Now? you don't even need a ps4 in that case Internet is nowhere near where it needs to be for high def gaming, and you have all sorts of input lag. ISP's would make big money as they could create 'gaming offers' where you get less bottleneck than a usual connection. Can't see it happening in the close future in any case Absolutely right. I completely forgot that PS Now hopes to be on your tablet, smartphone and Bravia in due course! The ISP point assumes the ISPs get their way on the net neutrality issue, doesn't it? As far as I know, in the UK at least, this wouldn't be an issue. Depends on your definition of "close future". This generation lasted 9-10 years. A lot can happen in a decade. 10 years ago my internet connection was something like 0.5MB/s, and I thought that was fast. Now my connection is 40MB/s. UHD streaming is already possible, it just needs to roll out further. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willstown Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 I'd say I'd still want different firms to be able to sell me 'keys' to games. If purely for competition to happen. Steam seem to be pretty good with pricing, Sony not so much. Not having physical consoles may lead to a homogenization of gaming though, I suspect we'll see at least one more console released just for the 3 big houses to have something that differentiates them from the PC world Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 Oh yeah, I'm just postulating this as a hypothetical. I personally think that the biggest obstacle to it would be gamer backlash, similar to what we saw with the XBone debacle. I can't imagine that: "PS5 games are coming, but you will need to be online and there's no actual console and you won't actually "own" anything but rather you will be subscribed to our service and by the way we can change the T's & C's whenever we like... etc..." will go down very well as a marketing line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExHaseo Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 I don't think that'll ever happen. The backlash at the X1's always online is proof of that. Also, there will always be a limit to what a machine can do. PS Now may just be streaming, but with increasing quality of games, there would have to be increasingly better connections, and the hardware would have to be upgraded to handle the increased load. Also, with the degrading condition of net neutrality in the US, it's doubtful that any company would want to make their primary service a streaming one. If they did, then the ISPs would start extorting millions of dollars from them, like they've already started doing to Netflix. Since the US is a major portion of the gaming market, a company wouldn't want to take that kind of risk, or pay that much extra, just to have their service available. I actually expect PS Now to become EU and JP exclusive in the future, if net neutrality doesn't get put back in place. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_Bee Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 (edited) I don't think that'll ever happen. The backlash at the X1's always online is proof of that. Also, there will always be a limit to what a machine can do. PS Now may just be streaming, but with increasing quality of games, there would have to be increasingly better connections, and the hardware would have to be upgraded to handle the increased load. Also, with the degrading condition of net neutrality in the US, it's doubtful that any company would want to make their primary service a streaming one. If they did, then the ISPs would start extorting millions of dollars from them, like they've already started doing to Netflix. Since the US is a major portion of the gaming market, a company wouldn't want to take that kind of risk, or pay that much extra, just to have their service available. I actually expect PS Now to become EU and JP exclusive in the future, if net neutrality doesn't get put back in place. The only reason that the ISP's can extort money from Netflix is because they have their own service to replace it. That is where the concept of net neutrality comes into play. They treat their own streaming service differently than Netflix, and make it much easier for people to use their service. Oh yeah, I'm just postulating this as a hypothetical. I personally think that the biggest obstacle to it would be gamer backlash, similar to what we saw with the XBone debacle. I can't imagine that: "PS5 games are coming, but you will need to be online and there's no actual console and you won't actually "own" anything but rather you will be subscribed to our service and by the way we can change the T's & C's whenever we like... etc..." will go down very well as a marketing line. But isn't that what PS+ does right now? You pay a subscription, and you then rent the games. You can only play them as long as your subscription stays active. I get that you are downloading the games to your system rather than streaming them, but it is the same ownership problem. I think that a system like this could actually work, if it were implemented well and with the customer in mind. Take Netflix as the perfect example. You don't need a bluray player, you just need to pay for the service and stream over your internet connection. Why can't that be implemented for games? (I understand that bandwidth is an issue, but it will get faster as time goes on) Living where I live now, I don't really have a problem with the need to be online to play some games, as long as the company hosting the game is reliable in keeping their servers online. Things happen all the time, and if a server goes down, its like your console breaks, they take time to fix. If they are good about fixing it, then I am ok with that. The problem here would be that the video game companies would be removing a lot of people from their pool of customers by having only a dedicated streaming environment. Edited July 8, 2014 by Sir_Bee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damon8r351 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 I think it will be a long time before PS Now will be anything other than just one of many options of getting your games. There's still a large population of gamers living in areas with usable internet, but not good enough to stream a game without issues. I remember last year at Thanksgiving at my wife's family's farmhouse in Indiana, trying to play a game online on their satellite connection. Forget it. It was good for checking email and watching the occasional Youtube video, but if you wanted to play online or watch some Netflix on demand, forget it. And it wasn't because that was the internet they could afford, it was because that was the only option they had in their location. So you're going to need to see a significant upgrade in the infrastructure of digital cable or something before you see something like that happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaivRules Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Then, why even get a PS4 when a Playstation TV (http://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/playstationtv) is supposed to be PS Now ready? In reality, a huge section of the gaming public still doesn't have the broadband necessary for this to be the only option. Discs are convenient as more and more ISPs cap not only the transmission speed, but also cap the amount of data that can be downloaded. Broadband prices are going up, but speeds are only increasing on the higher-priced packages. Since broadband access isn't given the same treatment phone access is given, many internet providers are making money and laughing all the way to the bank. While Sony (or any game-related company) would love it for no one to be able to re-sell any games people license (not buy) digitally, I and others like me will not support those systems that only have that option. Gaming is fun for me partly because it's affordable. I rarely purchase games on release day (only maybe 6-7 in my lifetime) and rely on the second-hand market to determine when I find games to be a good value. Not only that, I like to be able to recoup some of my costs by re-selling a game when I'm done with it. Playstation Now may help for titles I don't have access to and be convenient, but it's not the end-all of our current system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DARKSCORPONOXR Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 this discussion has been argued over again and again in the games industry for years so i dont think that particular avenue will ever take off fully, to make games systems obsolete will impact on all 3 companies cause without the physical hardware sales where will the money come from?... plus you can guarantee sony and co are already workin on the next gen systems too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExHaseo Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 The only reason that the ISP's can extort money from Netflix is because they have their own service to replace it. That is where the concept of net neutrality comes into play. They treat their own streaming service differently than Netflix, and make it much easier for people to use their service. That's not true at all. They extort money from them because they can, and they know that Netflix has to pay if they want to keep any subscribers/making money. If they wanted to replace Netflix with their own service, they would just make Netflix inaccessible or continually throttle Netflix to make their service appear to be better, which isn't the case. They just throttled Netflix until they payed up, because it makes them way more money to extort money from Netflix as well as get money from their on demand services. They'll likely do it every few years too, because they can. Same thing is liable to happen to any kind of large streaming service, like PS Now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickzilla10 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 (edited) What would happen if your internet dies? More importantly what would happen if the service itself crashes? If you are being ambitious with Playstation Now, games being streamed in 4K, 60 frames per second or higher, in large open worlds or with multiplayer....the requirement would be massive, it would dwarf what Netflix has to deal with, games are much more demanding then tv shows or movies to stream. Its likely the service would crash or go down for maintenance at some stages...which would make a lot of angry gamers not being able to play their games.....and latency lag will always be an issue if its being streamed like, you guys have been saying its gonna be very difficult for the service and internet speeds to keep up with games getting bigger and bolder. I haven't tried the service yet to make a final opinion but i'm just worried about the reliability after seeing other services crash....i'm sure they will end up getting PS1, PS2 and most PS3 games working eventually.....but PS4 games will take a while....and the PS4 games we have seen so far will be tiny compared to what will be coming out in 4 or 5 years... Its probably just because i'm use to it but I would always rather have it be that the games I play will be relying on the capabilities of the machine underneath my tv rather than a streaming service that would be tested to the max with millions of users streaming really demanding games... Edited July 8, 2014 by mary-d_9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_Bee Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 That's not true at all. They extort money from them because they can, and they know that Netflix has to pay if they want to keep any subscribers/making money. If they wanted to replace Netflix with their own service, they would just make Netflix inaccessible or continually throttle Netflix to make their service appear to be better, which isn't the case. They just throttled Netflix until they payed up, because it makes them way more money to extort money from Netflix as well as get money from their on demand services. They'll likely do it every few years too, because they can. Same thing is liable to happen to any kind of large streaming service, like PS Now. I cannot speak for the US, but in Canada, Bell has its own streaming service, and they don't count it towards bandwidth limits, making their service far cheaper than Netflix. On top of that, Netflix has to pay a premium to have their service not throttled. What would happen if your internet dies? More importantly what would happen if the service itself crashes? If you are being ambitious with Playstation Now, games being streamed in 4K, 60 frames per second or higher, in large open worlds or with multiplayer....the requirement would be massive, it would dwarf what Netflix has to deal with, games are much more demanding then tv shows or movies to stream. Its likely the service would crash or go down for maintenance at some stages...which would make a lot of angry gamers not being able to play their games.....and latency lag will always be an issue if its being streamed like, you guys have been saying its gonna be very difficult for the service and internet speeds to keep up with games getting bigger and bolder. I haven't tried the service yet to make a final opinion but i'm just worried about the reliability after seeing other services crash....i'm sure they will end up getting PS1, PS2 and most PS3 games working eventually.....but PS4 games will take a while....and the PS4 games we have seen so far will be tiny compared to what will be coming out in 4 or 5 years... Its probably just because i'm use to it but I would always rather have it be that the games I play will be relying on the capabilities of the machine underneath my tv rather than a streaming service that would be tested to the max with millions of users streaming really demanding games... Netflix goes down from time to time, what about all the angry people not being able to watch their tv shows? It is one thing if you bought the game, and cannot play it because the servers aren't up (diablo 3, sim city, and so on), but it is another all together if you don't actually own any of the games. The service would have to be set up properly, but I think that if the technical issues could be worked out, it would be a service I could get behind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merciful84 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 That's "Gaming Armageddon". "All of your game belong to us"...the console developer/content distributer has complete control over your gaming experience. From what games you play, when, to how! They'll be able to charge you out the ass for mediocrity and games will no longer be a product but a service. If/when that becomes a reality, gaming will no longer be a hobby but a burden that I will be more than happy to wash my hands of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DARKSCORPONOXR Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 (edited) i dont think streamin new games to play will ever become a full on reality, then to stream games through a service without an actual games system?... im not sure it would take off... we do it with movies and programmes but we only watch them, we dont interact with it so when breakin bad starts to go abit laggy its not a big deal but if your playin a new title and it gets hit by an influx of ppl loggin in then it will affect the games performance along with ruinin the experience altogether... all you have to do is go onto home and check out what thats like when new features get added, its turns into a mess and ends up crashin... then theres the threat of hackers constantly moddin codes and puttin gremlins into the mix... as someone has stated already, what sony are doin is providin an alternative to give you options and to give themselves another source of revenue to rake in... if you dont want to buy x game you can pay a fee to stream x game, thats about it... Edited July 8, 2014 by DARKSCORPONOXR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merciful84 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 (edited) i dont think streamin new games to play will ever become a full on reality, then to stream games through a service without an actual games system?... im not sure it would take off... we do it with movies and programmes but we only watch them, we dont interact with it so when breakin bad starts to go abit laggy its not a big deal but if your playin a new title and it gets hit by an influx of ppl loggin in then it will affect the games performance along with ruinin the experience altogether... all you have to do is go onto home and check out what thats like when new features get added, its turns into mess and ends up crashin... then theres the threat of hackers constantly moddin codes and puttin gremlins into the mix... as someone has stated already, what sony are doin is providin an alternative to give you options... if you dont want to buy x game you can pay a fee to stream x game, thats about it... That sounds more like a network infrastrucre issue which over time can be fixed...it is an issue today but no doubt it'll be a non-issue in the future. The main issue that I see is how much more direct control over the games it gives the service provider and how little to no control the consumer has. Remember the 2011 PSN outage (how could anyone forget)? Well, imagine that in this scenerio. No gaming for the customers but the service provider has still made their money off of the subscription fees. Not only that but think of some digital games that have been removed from the PSN store...Turtles in Time, The Punisher, Marvel vs Capcom 2 etc. At least we still have some way to enjoy 2 out of 3 of these games (physical media and ROMs) but in a 100% streaming future, we will have no other means to enjoy those games once they're gone moving forward. Edited July 8, 2014 by merciful84 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DARKSCORPONOXR Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 (edited) thats why i dont think it'll become a reality merciful... its just a service as of now and to fully intergrate it would be ridiculous... anyways i've got a games library of over 230 games i've yet to play for the ps3, 40 games for the psvita too and i havnt even got into the new gen yet so i've got plenty of games to see me through if streamin does end up bein the mainstay... lol so fuck em... Edited July 8, 2014 by DARKSCORPONOXR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merciful84 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 thats why i dont think it'll become a reality merciful... its just a service as of now and to fully intergrate it would be ridiculous... anyways i've got a games library of over 230 games i've yet to play for the ps3, 40 games for the psvita too and i havnt even got into the new gen yet so i've got plenty of games to see me through if streamin does end up bein the mainstay... lol so fuck em... I really hope you're right, man. The way the things are looking though with the popularity of Netflix & Steam and now the introduction of Playstation Now as "THE" answer to no backwards compatibility...it doesn't look good. I'm in the same backlog situation too. I just hope I can finish them all before Sony discontinues PS3 support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
licurgoalmeida Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 I don't know if system like PS now are even possible to work properly just because the inescapable lag. Even in the best of the worlds, with the best internet connections, you might experience some sort of lag that is not acceptable for many games. I guess you can play mass effect or WOW with some lag, but I'm not sure the same is true for games like Devil May Cry, FPSs and Street Fighter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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