![]() It seems Sony's 2012 purchase of streaming company Gaikai, along with the intervening wait for improvements in underlying Internet streaming technology, have paid off.PlayStation Now is an ongoing subscription with a recurring subscription fee which is charged automatically (at the then-current PlayStation Store price) at the frequency you choose at purchase until the subscription is cancelled. It's all the more impressive when you consider that, four years ago, a 20 Mbps FiOS connection wasn't good enough for a solid OnLive performance in our tests. If your PS4 can clock in for downloads above 9 Mbps, though, you're in for an impressively functional streaming gaming experience. Also note that the PS4's reported bandwidth is usually a bit lower than your ISP's theoretical maximum, even without interference, and others using the same connection simultaneously may impact the available throughput to the PS4). (Note that the PS4's connection tests can be pretty unreliable, and they may give different numbers over multiple tests. With anything from 5 to 9 Mbps, you'll find PlayStation Now usable but probably not ideal all of the time. If you consistently get numbers under 5 Mbps, you'll need to beef up your connection before being able to use the service reliably. By the time we hit 9 Mbps of download speed, streaming once again felt like local play.īefore considering PlayStation Now, we'd recommend going into your PS4 settings and seeing what kind of download speeds you can register through the Connection Test option. At this bandwidth level, the only issues were occasional compression artifacts appearing as small, scrambled boxes of pixels for a few frames here and there. At a limit of 8 Mbps, the image returned to what seemed like 720p HD and boasted a solid frame rate throughout. With just a little more bandwidth, though, the experience improved quite a bit. This might be because that game's static view of the chess board remains largely unchanged from frame to frame, which probably helps with the compressed image stream. The only exception was our test of Pure Chess, which only drew 732 MB of data on an hourly basis. This rate varied very little across a number of game types, from heavy action games to low-res classics to relatively sedate puzzle games. On a plan with a 150 GB data cap, that means you could stream about 57 hours of PlayStation Now gaming every month, provided you didn't want to do anything else with your connection. In our tests, most games sucked down an average of 2.6 GB of downloaded data over an hour of gameplay. Sliding under the data capIf you're one of the many unlucky broadband customers subject to a cap on your data usage, you may rightly wonder how streaming HD gameplay from a remote server will eat into your monthly allotment. To see how the service scaled, we went into our router settings and intentionally limited the bandwidth going to the PlayStation 4. Of course, not everyone has such a healthy Internet pipe leading into their home these days (#humblebrag). If you set the PlayStation Now app next to a PlayStation 3 running the same game, we'd be hard pressed to tell you which was which. While pro-level players might be able to notice some dropped frames in a twitch-heavy game like Super Street Fighter IV, an intermediate player (including this reviewer) should see no apparent issues. The performance over this connection was identical over wireless and wired connections, and it didn't seem to dip even when someone was streaming video in another room. We saw a smooth, rock-steady frame rate and seemingly instantaneous responses to our controller inputs. ![]() ![]() After about 30 to 60 seconds of start up (including a required connection test to confirm bandwidth), PlayStation Now games ran at a solid HD resolution. At that speed, the streaming experience was practically indistinguishable from loading a disc on a local PS3. For one, we tested PlayStation Now on a relatively beefy (but still residential-level) 75 Mbps FiOS connection in the Washington, DC suburbs. Things have changed quite a bit in the intervening time. Even with a 20Mbps FiOS connection, our reviewer "could tell that the game was not running natively" thanks to "framerate bumps, sudden resolution drops, and gameplay blips." Further Reading Ars reviews the OnLive microconsole, serviceWhen initially reviewing OnLive back in 2010, running a game through the offering's remote servers was a noticeably worse experience than running that same game locally.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |