Your Games and Your Network

The Network - or internet has brought to gaming, something revolutionary. The game is no longer just defined by the players in the room, we can be playing with or against a player across the other side of the world. We can buy games digitally over the network and download new games content.

However, the network also created a problematic side effect, game patches. While I welcome the fact that game breaking bugs can be rectified, I cannot accept half-baked games rushed to meet release dates or holiday sales. One such example is Battlefield 4. The game could have benefited from an additional month of QA and testing, not released into the wild and patched several times. These patches are not small but the crown jewel of all patches have to be Dead Rising 3 on Xbox One, a whopping 13Gb. 

Next, as we step into the new generation where graphical assets such as textures are of higher quality, digital game sizes are on the uptrend. For example, on PS4, NBA2K14 is over 40Gb in size. This is one of the major roadblock for consumer adoption of digital gaming. 

I have a 5Mbps that costs me RM150 (~US$45) a month, and a 10Gb download will probably take me about 6 hours. Although my current ISP does not impose bandwidth caps, it won't take long if I continue to make large game downloads. Or maybe my ISP can look into working with Sony to launch a new streaming game service.

Playstation Now, is one of the key announcements from Sony from 2014's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The idea is simple, to enable the consumption of Sony Playstation's family of gaming content across multiple technological platforms, both Sony (like PS4, PSVita, Bravia TV) and even non-Sony device like tablets and smartphones. It is US only and will be in closed BETA in February with a launch planned in July.

It was demoed to the CES visitors and worked wonderfully, showcasing games like The Last of Us and God of War: Ascension. The technology uses custom hardware stored in data centres and streams the gameplay to your device. It is a novel idea, however even the most optimistic person will be concerned about how this will perform over the internet, raising latency and bandwidth concerns.

If local ISPs and Sony can work together to deliver this gaming service, things could be interesting. Playstation NOW could entice new audiences to the world of Playstation and Playstation 4.