![]() That includes platform-standard stuff like gameplay status updates, unlocking trophies, dispatching multiplayer invites (which doesn’t require a PS Plus subscription) and copying save files to and from cloud storage, which facilitates seamless interaction between the PS Now and discrete PS4 versions of these games (this does requires a PS Plus subscription). “Because the PlayStation 4 is a different platform, it does require a different delivery path and did require a lot of testing.” “It’s a lot of work, any time you do any of these things,” says Lempel. Games have bespoke platform backends, and the PlayStation 4’s is obviously quite different from the PlayStation 3’s. It was also no low-hanging endeavor bringing PlayStation 4 games to PS Now, says Sony. “You’re still getting the experience the developers intended.” “You’re really not giving up anything in terms of the quality of the experience at this point,” he says. Lempel says that while Sony continues to work to enhance the service’s topological capabilities, consumers are already pretty happy with its performance. “You have to be able to hit a baseball, or jump out of the way of a bullet, or duck behind something, and all of that must happen when you want it to happen or it’s not a good experience.” “Gaming, unlike other media, has to function well in real-time,” concedes Lempel. Sony’s take is bullish, of course: “We set goals for the service and we’re achieving those goals, and I can say that 40% growth is really healthy compared to our initial forecast,” adds Lempel.Īnother concern, admittedly more for purists who fret over the sort of visual aberrations that can momentarily glitch streaming content when Internet speeds yo-yo, is what Sony’s been doing to improve the so-called “last mile” quality of service. It’s hard to wrap your head around what these numbers signify, since they’re decoupled from baselines, thus figures like a 63% increase in play sessions from 2015 to 2016, or 40% active subscriber growth for the same period year-on-year, don’t provide the connective tissue necessary to gauge contextual performance. ![]() When I asked Lempel how PS Now was doing in general, he declined to give subscriber totals, but offered two general statistics. But as of August 15, 2017, it will be exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation 4 as well as any Windows PC. The service has been available on PlayStation 3, PS Vita, PS TV as well as select Sony and Samsung TVs. Sony bought Gaikai in 2012, spun out its PS Now service (which launched in January 2015), shifted to an all-you-can-play monthly subscription model and now boasts a library of over 500 PlayStation 3 games. Perhaps due to the save system, which we discussed before.PS Now is Sony’s Netflix-like game streaming service, the heir apparent to once renowned startups like OnLive and Gaikai. Returnal’s player average out of 2646 ratings is 7.3/10. (In comparison, Resogun has 84/100 out of 66 critic reviews.) Returnal is a success for the team: its Metacritic page shows an 86/100 average out of 106 publications, which is a solid score. The 26 years comment isn’t random: Housemarque was formed in July 1995 as a merger between Bloodhouse and Terramarque (both formed in 1993, being the first commercial devs in Finland), and that happened nearly 26 years ago. But that depends on how successful we can build ourselves with the types of experiences that Returnal now is representing,” Mikael Haveri, the marketing director of Housemarque, told GameReactor in an interview. Who knows? Maybe 26 years in the future we’ll do more of that as well. We can do all kinds of things, and from our studio’s perspective, that means that we want to go for these bigger types of experiences. The idea is that we now want to show we’re not just a Resogun studio. It’s hard to say if we will continue with one or two projects in the future, but the idea of us now being able to establish ourselves with Returnal will be defining the future type of titles we want to make. „We’ve been working on two projects previously, and now with Returnal we have of course only one project. This might be somewhat of a self-critical comment: Resogun was one of the PlayStation 4 launch titles in November 2013, and that side-scrolling bullet hell shoot’em up provided a significant challenge for the then-new Sony console that has become one of the best-sellers for the company (only the PS2 pulled in more sales, but unless Sony cuts the PlayStation 4’s price and continues manufacturing it, the PS4 will remain the second-best).
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