Report: PlayStation Now powered by specialized PS3 hardware
Sony has reportedly developed a special PlayStation 3 model for use in their PlayStation Now data centers, the equivalent of housing eight systems on a single motherboard.
Sony has reportedly designed a modified version of the PlayStation 3 for use in its PlayStation Now data centers. While the company apparently tried off-the-shelf PS3s, it ultimately found that needed something more to power the cloud gaming service. Instead, it opted instead to use new hardware that's the equivalent of eight systems housed on a single motherboard.
Digital Foundry cites sources close to the project, stating that the revisions let Sony cut latency in the Now service. It came with other benefits as well, including shelf space and electricity usage. Gaikai was a software team at its core, the report states, but when snatched up by Sony the teams started to work together and noticed the need for dedicated hardware.
PlayStation Now is planned to hit a closed beta this month, and Sony has said it recommends a 5Mbps connection at minimum. Our own hands-on from CES left us fairly impressed, but we'll have to see how well the service works when it's out in the wild.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Report: PlayStation Now powered by specialized PS3 hardware.
Sony has reportedly developed a special PlayStation 3 model for use in their PlayStation Now data centers, the equivalent of housing eight systems on a single motherboard.-
Sounds expensive. I guess it turns into a lot of profit after the you get enough subscriptions pay for the machines.
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they're using 8 year old chips so the tech itself isn't that expensive. It's just a matter of if they are going to need enough of them to be able to purchase in a large enough volume so that the mfg costs aren't abhorrent.
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I have a feeling one of the end-goals is to make a ps4 server farm and allow PC gamers to play ps4 games for a subscription, thereby expanding the user base and the playstation brand. Cloud gaming is still a niche because of the lag, but it feels like a worthy endeavor.
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Great idea, but this is based on PS3 hardware, ergo no PS4 games yet?
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I'm sure it will be totally fine, especially with a controller.
I was using OnLive what...like two years ago now? And it was great for most games (including FPS - I played Fear 2 using the service). I'm sure it's gotten even better since then, and even more so since Sony has taken charge of Gaikai.
What remains to be seen is how clear the picture is on a huge ass TV. It will look amazing on a Vita though.-
The latency will not improve substantially.
The transmission of the video signal will always take that long which is completely governed by how far internet distance you are from a server farm. Encoding and decoding the video will improve to an extent but you aren't going to see a lot of improvement there either.
Hell, just trying to use my mouse on my TV with a 3-4 frame delay from the LCD crystals is brutal. Triple that would be on a whole other level of awful.
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Have they announced a business model for this yet other than it might be a subscription service. I wonder if you get complete access to the PSN library with the subscription.
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