Sony developing PSone and PS2 emulation on the PS4

[WCP]

Here's my theory...


You have Sony coming out with "Playstation Now" in the Summer. PS1,PS2 and PS3 games. Why would they have anything conflict with that during it's launch ? They want people paying a monthly subscription. However, does Sony really want to set up a farm of PS1's and PS2's running games via streaming, or how about you just download the game and play it natively in an emulator if it's small enough. For example, when you "stream" Jet Moto, you temporarily stream it, but in the background the full game is downloading, and it will run off the native emulator during any further plays, once it's installed.


Why would Sony waste the bandwidth of streaming games less than 1 gig large ? Why not a temporary stream, and then once the game is fully installed, it switches to the emulator (without the vast majority of consumers having any idea that it isn't just really, really accurate streaming ?

[Greg2600]

I really would be shocked if Sony does streaming games.

[j_factor]

As far as PS1 specifically goes... it's already fully emulated on PS3, PSP, Vita... not to mention Android and everything else. A 12 year old PC can run an emulator. If they wanted a PS1 emulator, they could've done that already, it's not like it's difficult.

[WCP]

I really would be shocked if Sony does streaming games.

Supposedly they are rolling it out this Summer. I guess it's one of those believe it when you see it things. I just know if there is any lag at all, I'm not messing with it. Even a tiny bit of lag or hiccups would really bother me.

[Leo_A]

I really would be shocked if Sony does streaming games.

They didn't spend nearly $400 million to buy Gaikai for nothing. The public beta already is underway with a full launched planned for the middle portion of the year for Sony's new streaming game service for the PS4 which will initially feature PS3 content.

I'm surprised that you haven't heard about Playstation Now which is what this is branded as.

[WCP]

As far as PS1 specifically goes... it's already fully emulated on PS3, PSP, Vita... not to mention Android and everything else. A 12 year old PC can run an emulator. If they wanted a PS1 emulator, they could've done that already, it's not like it's difficult.

Yeah, emulating the PS1 and PS2 would be unbelievably easy for the PS4. In fact, Sony could do some extra stuff to help make the games look even better, like the various PC emulators that can upscale PS1 and PS2 games and make them almost look high-def. Emulating the PS3 is another story. The Cell processor and Nvidia gpu used would be very difficult to emulate. So, when you are playing PS3 games, they will likely be streamed. I'm thinking larger PS2 games will also be streamed. But all PS1 games, streaming them wouldn't really make that much sense if you really think about it. Instead, I think the games will somehow download to the device and run off an emulator. Only problem with that, is that Sony is going to have to say that Playstation Now when used on PS4 takes up say 10 gigs of the hard drive space. That space would be reserved, so that it could download games and store them there, and run them off the emulator. When that space gets filled, it would auto delete the least played game, and if the person chose to play that game again, it would be streamed (temporarily), until something else is erased and the game is redownloaded. They could make it work in such a way that most people wouldn't notice anything at all. It's just you have to have 10 gigs of your hard drive reserved for it.

On Vita, they would probably limit it to like 2 gigs or something, cause people's available memory is so much smaller. You'd probably have to stream the majority of the PS2 library, when using the Vita, because most PS2 games would go over the size limit.

[Leo_A]

In fact, Sony could do some extra stuff to help make the games look even better, like the various PC emulators that can upscale PS1 and PS2 games and make them almost look high-def.

They don't upscale in HD, they actually render the games directly into HD. That's why the Dolphin emulator looks so amazing for Wii games in still screenshots compared to how they look upscaled by the Wii U.

It's anything but easy though. But at least they have ample resources now unlike what the situation seemed to be for PS2 emulation on the PS3 which they only finally conquered late in the generation (And I suspect has to be specifically tailored for each game not unlike Microsoft's BC solution on the 360).