Wednesday, 8 January 2014

Playstation Now and Steam In-Home Streaming

I guess we now know what Sony have been doing with Gaikai.

http://www.videogamer.com/news/playstation_now_brings_streamed_games_to_ps4_ps3_and_ps_vita.html
The service promises to offer a "variety of popular PS3 games" first on PS4 and PS3, followed by the PS Vita. There's also potential for the service to stream classic PSOne, PS2, and PS3 titles. Additionally, most 2014 US models of Sony's Bravia TV line-up will support PS Now.
I love this idea. It has been tried before with OnLive of course, but their selection was a little weak. If Sony can do this with a reasonably priced subscription model and good latency, it could be very exciting. Unfortunately they haven't confirmed for Europe (or anywhere other than the US) yet.

Speaking of streaming, I can barely contain my anticipation of the Steam in-home streaming feature. There is no way that we want a PC in the living room with all the noise that it brings (not to mention that it's a great ugly box), but it is nice to play games on the big TV, so the ability to stream from my office upstairs to a little box under the telly downstairs has me all a-quiver. Latency shouldn't be an issue with a wired network, so it should be super smooth. My concern will be the hardware requirement for the main PC as it may mean a new graphics card, which means delving into the nonsensical hell that is PC components and their numbering systems. Ugh.

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