Sony has unveiled their new streaming game service called Playstation Now at CES 2014, which will allow gamers to stream PSOne, PS2, and PS3 games to the PS4, PS3 and later PS Vita. However, it also intends to expand the service to non-Playstation devices, including their BRAVIA TV’s, tablets and smartphones. This is an excellent opportunity for the mainline Yakuza entries and the first Valkyria Chronicles among other games to appear on the service, which sadly are currently unavailable as digital download on PSN. The main advantage of a streaming service is that the games would not have to be ported to an entirely different platform. They simply run on Sony’s server and the video output is streamed back to your device, while your controller input is sent to the server. The challenge Sony will face with their service is to ensure a high video quality while keeping the latency low (sending data to and from the server takes time and also depends on the speed of your Internet connection). The service will be entering beta testing this month, with a public release planned later this year in the US.
For that matter a game like Valkyria Chronicles would probably be an ideal choice to showcase this technology: the gameplay would hardly suffer from a bit of latency and the game’s art style isn’t as complex as those found in games aiming for more realism, making it easier to compress and stream over the Internet. But given how Sony intends to release The Last of Us for the service, the Yakuza games should have no problem running on the service either.
Is anyone interested in this service, and would you like to see Sega games released on it? Feel free to let us know in the comments!
Source: PlayStation Now Streaming Game Service Coming this Summer