Can I use this to make backups of my game saves to USB?
Being somewhat naive to the gaming scene, I only recently discovered that the PS5 prevents you from backing up your game saves to your own physical media - something that was possible on the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4.
Instead, you have to subscribe to PS Plus and enable cloud backups - and you need a separate subscription per user profile.
I only discovered this after my daughter lost a year of work in Minecraft due to data corruption, and I tried to teach her the value of backing up.
If things continue they may be everyone's last console. The next gen might effectively be a video player and controller interface for content rendered outside of your home. No physical games (or saved game backups) at all under this scheme, of course.
Ask Google, Microsoft or Nvidia why it's not in fact the future of gaming. You need to be rich enough to have fast internet and pay an expensive subscription yet poor enough to fail to afford a GPU at home, all while accepting low bitrate and high input latency. It's not a large addressable market.
Also super fast loading times. Playing e.g. RDR2 on a physical console, by comparison, is painful.
Stadia worked absurdly well. One of the beta games was Thumper, a demanding rhythm game (I might be the reason why it was in the beta lineup actually). How well did that work out? Well, the latency made it hard to play... until I switched my TV to so-called "gaming mode". And then it was fine.
No kidding. The TV was introducing more latency than Stadia itself.
I also once tested it on hotel wifi. It worked great.
(Mind you, this was in Europe. YMMV.)
The business model however was terrible and killed the product IMO. Which, honestly, good: Stadia would have killed video game archiving efforts. If a publisher folds and Stadia and similar platforms stop streaming its streaming-exclusives, then those games are gone. Not worth it, no matter how well it worked.
yeah i felt so dumb with how constantly bad in home streaming was for me with latency and i just could not pinpoint the issue until one day i swapped my tv into gamemode and boom..... felt like i was playing on my desktop
If Sony and MSFT decide to go down this route and it's the only way to play blockbuster games, it'll happen whether we like it or not because the market cares far more about playing the latest game than it does maintaining control over its own destiny so to speak. Very few consumers will eschew the Latest Thing and just happily play older games on their own PC (or console) to make a point to the publishers.
Pushback like there was to making Office 365 or Adobe subscription-only? Or pushback like there was to Google mostly killing AOSP? Or pushback like there was to ads in Netflix & friends? Or pushback like there was to <pick a subscription service> price hikes?
You'll note that all those things are still there, and their competitors are either not there or not significantly bolstered by people disgruntled by those changes.
How do you pirate GTA:7 when your console never even gets the whole thing in its own memory? That's the point: piracy as we know it becomes largely impossible. Jailbreaking a console won't help. In fact, the publishers could open source the consoles and allow rooted consoles to play, because who cares?
> If Sony and MSFT decide to go down this route and it's the only way to play blockbuster games, it'll happen whether we like it or not because the market cares far more about playing the latest game than it does maintaining control over its own destiny so to speak.
Maybe, or maybe it'll live a giant gap waiting to be filled in by a new competitor in the console market.
publlus_enigma · · focus · HN ↗
Being somewhat naive to the gaming scene, I only recently discovered that the PS5 prevents you from backing up your game saves to your own physical media - something that was possible on the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4.
Instead, you have to subscribe to PS Plus and enable cloud backups - and you need a separate subscription per user profile.
I only discovered this after my daughter lost a year of work in Minecraft due to data corruption, and I tried to teach her the value of backing up.
The PS5 may be my last console.
browsingonly · · focus · HN ↗
robben1234 · · focus · HN ↗
bsimpson · · focus · HN ↗
I've heard people play Fortnite Festival (basically Rock Band, and very latency sensitive) over Microsoft/Amazon cloud streaming.
"low bitrate and high input latency" is what you'd expect rendering offsite, but in practice, it seems to work surprisingly well.
Balinares · · focus · HN ↗
Stadia worked absurdly well. One of the beta games was Thumper, a demanding rhythm game (I might be the reason why it was in the beta lineup actually). How well did that work out? Well, the latency made it hard to play... until I switched my TV to so-called "gaming mode". And then it was fine.
No kidding. The TV was introducing more latency than Stadia itself.
I also once tested it on hotel wifi. It worked great.
(Mind you, this was in Europe. YMMV.)
The business model however was terrible and killed the product IMO. Which, honestly, good: Stadia would have killed video game archiving efforts. If a publisher folds and Stadia and similar platforms stop streaming its streaming-exclusives, then those games are gone. Not worth it, no matter how well it worked.
exhumet · · focus · HN ↗
m4rtink · · focus · HN ↗
If they decide one day to fuck you over, there is nothing you can do about it.
browsingonly · · focus · HN ↗
If Sony and MSFT decide to go down this route and it's the only way to play blockbuster games, it'll happen whether we like it or not because the market cares far more about playing the latest game than it does maintaining control over its own destiny so to speak. Very few consumers will eschew the Latest Thing and just happily play older games on their own PC (or console) to make a point to the publishers.
m4rtink · · focus · HN ↗
zbentley · · focus · HN ↗
You'll note that all those things are still there, and their competitors are either not there or not significantly bolstered by people disgruntled by those changes.
m4rtink · · focus · HN ↗
And making media subscription more expensive will just push more people to piracy, so they will just loose money due to their greed.
browsingonly · · focus · HN ↗
fragmede · · focus · HN ↗
wtetzner · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe, or maybe it'll live a giant gap waiting to be filled in by a new competitor in the console market.