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I’m legitimately impressed with PSnow and I have shit internet (700KBPS average)

Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,394
Ibis Island
I grabbed PSnow today for the downloadable PS4 games. I had no intention of even bothering with streaming, but with the option being there and no harm in trying I booted up Killzone 1.

As soon as I started the game I was already impressed with the input feedback. It was far less noticeable than I thought. This has always been a big concern of mine due to numerous remote play attempts where the input delay was horribly bad. Despite this I ended up getting kicked off due to my connection (A download likely started on another machine).

After this I tried out Hakuoki which is a visual novel. Due to the game being a lot of still frames it ran perfectly. To the point where if anyone had walked in, I doubt they'd have known I was steaming anything.

After this I went for the last test. Dead or Alive 5: Last Round. As I'm not a pro fighting player, I figured this would be a decent test. After playing 21 matches online and getting 80% of the trophies in the title. Things have ran far better than expected.

Now don't get me wrong, on my connection there's plenty of moments where the image quality drops, and I've been kicked out twice when my connection got really bad. But as an option to play some older titles without plugging in my PS3, I'm pretty floored things are running the way they are.

I can definitely see why there's such a push for this technology now. With more options on image quality and such, there's even more untapped potential here across all of the potential providers.

I'd recommend everyone try out the 7 day trial, especially if your internet is better than mine. I think you might be decently impressed.

*I haven't tried PS4 titles yet and will update when I do.
 

Deleted member 71

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,857
I tried out some PS3 titles back in late 2017 and I was really impressed with the performance.

My internet isn't the best, but I honestly had a blast playing Final Fight, Darkstalkers and Third Strike with my friend. I then tried out some single player focused games and honeslty felt like it was close to playing on actual hardware. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was honestly a solid option to replay some PS3 games.
 
Proven

Proven

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
5,841
I tried playing doom and I have about 450 mbs down. It's definitely noticeable (for me at least) in terms of fidelity and input lag, but it's definitely playable. It's really neat to be able to jump into a game in seconds without a download
 
sredgrin

sredgrin

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
12,276
Input for me has been fine, it's the image quality that is a struggle to get over. Right now I've got my PC hooked to a secondary TV in a lower rez (slightly above 720p as my TV overscans) mode and that helps hide some of the blemishes, but playing it at 1080p on the TV or 1440p on my monitor was just plain ugly.
 
Richter1887

Richter1887

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
39,146
Yeah it is pretty great when you think about it.

I would have subbed had I not bought most of the games I would have played on it. Things will only get better from here.
 

Deleted member 721

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,416
i think psnow is very dependable of location, i heard people saying its great and horrible already.
 
VanWinkle

VanWinkle

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,089
Things have definitely improved over how they were years ago.

A big hope of mine next-gen is that Sony doesn't skip on the wifi tech in the PS5.
 
sleepr

sleepr

Banned for misusing pronouns feature
Banned
Oct 30, 2017
2,965
Dynomutt said:
Curious if the deal with MS for Azure is making strides already....?
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Not yet AFAIK.

Sony really hasn't upgraded the service in a long time. They need to raise the service to the new standards. Even geforce now is better.

I would say they're probably working on it. And with azure network ps now should improve a lot too.
 
Hoo-doo

Hoo-doo

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,292
The Netherlands
Remote Play always worked flawlessly for me even hundreds of miles away from my home, so i'm guessing PSNow will be near-flawless too. Will give the trial a shot.
 

lynux3

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
569
Jawmuncher said:
that could definitely be a factor. Though I'm unsure of any way to check that.
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Without capturing traffic it would be difficult, but it does depend on location, ISP, path, etc. Lots of factors so no one will have a consistent experience. If I remember correctly, Sony has PlayStation Now residing in 15 data centers and there are 37 PoPs (Points of Presence).
 
BrickArts295

BrickArts295

GOTY Tracking Thread Master
Member
Oct 26, 2017
13,731
Basically if your not uptight about about lag and video quality, then the service is actually pretty great, specially now for $10 per month.
Playing inFamous right now and I'm having a good time with it.
 
RestEerie

RestEerie

Banned
Aug 20, 2018
13,618
it's really less about your internet bandwidth and more about the latency..aka how many 'hops' there were between the client (your PS4) and the datacenter servers.
 
MilesQ

MilesQ

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,490
BrickArts295 said:
Basically if your not uptight about about lag and video quality, then the service is actually pretty great, specially now for $10 per month.
Playing inFamous right now and I'm having a good time with it.
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Never pay full price. I managed to grab two years of now for just over £60.

Anyway, Now is indeed pretty great and do is Infamous. I'm really glad they did away with the queuing, that was always stupid as fuck.
 
FluffyQuack

FluffyQuack

Member
Nov 27, 2017
1,353
I had a pretty bad experience with PSNow streaming when I tried it last year. Menu-driven games were playable, but any 3D game with a camera was a mess because of the lag I was getting. I'm assuming Sony doesn't have any data centres in or close to Norway, so that would explain the high input delay I was getting.
 

azertydu91

Member
Oct 27, 2017
320
FluffyQuack said:
I had a pretty bad experience with PSNow streaming when I tried it last year. Menu-driven games were playable, but any 3D game with a camera was a mess because of the lag I was getting. I'm assuming Sony doesn't have any data centres in or close to Norway, so that would explain the high input delay I was getting.
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Probably I tired in France and near Paris it worked flawlessly I could play Ninja Gaiden (sigma I think) and kill the first boss tried some slower paced games and some more input precise and it worked great.

Maybe someone here has a map of their data centers .
 
PixelatedDonut

PixelatedDonut

Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,966
Philly ❤️
it still sucks for me, but I haven't tried it in like 6 months. In Philly with FIOS 1gb, latency wasn't horrible the the compression was.
 
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TheDudePT

TheDudePT

Banned
Oct 3, 2019
189
Portugal
Portugal here, 1Gb internet speed.

Tried it yesterday, specifically with fighters (Blazblue and SFIV,) and was impressed with how responsive it was. I could feel the lag but I expected MUCH worse.
 
Klobrille

Klobrille

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,360
Germany
It ... Works. Not more. Not less. The quality simply isn't good, they really need to allow higher resolutions. I'm challenger in Rocket League and tried it on PS Now as a latency test and ... No chance to compete. Impossible.

I have pretty much perfect network conditions, and if I compare it directly, my time with Stadia was a lot more impressive both from a quality and latency standpoint. Haven't tested xCloud enough just yet.

I think the foundation is alright, and it might be okay for cinematic singleplayer games even, but they definitely still have a lot of work to do.
 
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pswii60

pswii60

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,657
The Milky Way
Jraphics Horse said:
Oh KiloBytes? yeah that would make sense, I couldn't imagine it working on 700kbps. I had a good experience when I tested it years ago on a similar speed on PS3. Using it on Vita was a different story though.
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Yeah I got confused too. As PS Now won't work on a 700kb (kilobit) connection, it wouldn't even pass the performance test allowing you to use it.

Personally, I tried PS Now on my 330mbit connection and was totally unimpressed. I even tried a few basic games like Super Exploding Zoo and there were obvious artefacts and it felt really laggy moving the character around. I'm in the UK though, perhaps they have better servers and performance etc elsewhere in the world.

I'm never going to be a great advocate of cloud gaming though because I'm the ultimate input lag whore. I reinvested in a C9 OLED this year even though my other OLED was only a couple of years old just so I could appreciate the low input lag and 120hz. I even bought a gaming PC because I was sick of laggy feeling games on console like Metro Exodus which have less latency on PC. That said, I could tolerate a little lag for casual gaming on the go, or if I wanted to play my games when staying away from home. But PS Now was far, far beyond my tolerance, certainly wouldn't be possible to play Celeste lol
 
Andalusia

Andalusia

Alt Account
Member
Sep 26, 2019
620
I've tried it a few times and for me it wasn't viable at all as a serious gaming choice. The input lag and dips in video quality were just too frequent and too noticeable to consider sinking 10, 20 or maybe even 30 hours into a game with them in it. It would seriously dampen the overall experience of that game. If you're looking for a quick ~1 hour time kill here and there, sure. But I can't imagine being invested in a game and playing it with the issues PSNow has.

Granted it ran awful on PS3 to begin with, but could you honestly imagine playing RDR and it's ~25 hour run time on PSNow?
 
Crumpo

Crumpo

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,131
Bournemouth, UK
I got a 12 month sub for £40 last week and finally got around to testing streaming this week-I was also surprised about the latency not being that much of a problem. it honestly wasn't that noticeable.

This is a good sign for the streaming services in general - I'm much more likely to try out Xcloud now, as a result.

I personally will be much happier when streams are 1080p as on ps3 games you can just about notice the rough IQ. I haven't streamed ps4 games but can guess they're more obviously gimped.
 
Terraforce

Terraforce

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
18,917
Yup. Seems like a lot of complaints are from people who haven't even given it a shot. Streaming your games may sound bad in concept, but PSNow is well executed. Even on my parent's crappy 5 mbps wifi I would often forget I'm actually streaming the game and not playing it naturally. With 100+ mbps which is pretty common now in the US there's next to no issue whatsoever.
 
Danielsan

Danielsan

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,631
The Netherlands
Tried it in 2018 with PS3 titles on the PS4 and I was also impressed. I think a lot of the complaints come from US press, as a European chances are that your internet connection is quite a bit better and thus your experience with PSnow will far exceed what some outlets would have you believe.
 
Nameless

Nameless

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,343
Played about 40 hours of New Vegas earlier this year and a few hours of Ninja Gaiden I & II and it was fine-to-quite-good. I did get noticeably better results going wired via my powerline adapter even though the Wi-Fi connection clocks better speeds.

Looking forward to trying it out more.
 

Necronomicon

Banned
Dec 11, 2017
374
Tried on pc. I'm playing God of war. It's not bad. Worst thing it's the automatic disconnect if you stay inactive (means that you have to save before making any kind of pause from playing).

Library it's not impressive. Until January you have god of war infamous and uncharted 4... But it's not enough time to properly play and finish all of them.
And all the other games are, I don't know... Most of them are not attractive.
Also playing PS3 or PS2 versions of remastered PS4 games it's baffling
 
P-MAC

P-MAC

Member
Nov 15, 2017
4,449
Same here, I tried PSNow when it first came out and while not unplayable, there was a noticeable delay and occasional stutters.

Tried again the other day for the first time since then and it was flawless. I played through 2-3 hours of Doom 2016 and literally forgot I was streaming it.

This is on one of the slowest internet packages in the UK.

Not sure if it's Azure or general improvements over time but it's night and day.
 
RROCKMAN

RROCKMAN

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,817
That's not bad internet,

Now refuses to connect even when hard wired in for me, and I know I have bad internet
 

Deleted member 4976

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,246
I have great internet and while the streaming service runs fine, I can't handle any sort of noticeable input lag in a real time game. And the input delay is noticeable.

I'd only really play turn based games or titles where timing/inputs don't matter much over streaming. And even then... eh.
 
get2sammyb

get2sammyb

Editor at Push Square
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
3,006
UK
It's always been much better than people think. I'm not sure why it's always been excluded from the streaming conversation when it's still the only tangible service on the market.
 
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