Tag: Sony Playstation

Fortnite made it with true cross-platform multiplayer gaming

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Sony PS4

This Sony PS4 can now benefit from true cross-platform online gameplay thanks to Fortnite

PS4 Cross-Play Is Finally Happening; Fortnite Beta Starts Today | GameSpot

Fortnite Won | Gizmodo

Fans Forcing Sony Into ‘Fortnite’ PS4 Crossplay Is A Watershed Moment For Gaming | Forbes

From the horse’s mouth

Sony Interactive Entertainment (PlayStation)

Extended Fortnite Cross-Play Beta Launches on PS4 Starting Today (Press Release)

My Comments

Game On no matter the console! At last true multiplatform cross-play has arrived!

All off the regular-computer, console and mobile platforms that Epic Games wrote the various ports of the Fortnite battle-royale multiplayer game have supported cross-platform multiplayer gaming except for one glaring omission being Sony with their PS4 console.

It has been part of a long-time practice with games-console manufacturers who are dependent on full vertical integration which affected things like multi-player multi-machine gaming where the games-console vendor would prefer to keep that between their own products. This was against the accepted norms of what is accepted with regular personal computers where it is desirable to play the same online game no matter the computing platform that your opponents use.

XBox One games console press photo courtesy Microsoft

The XBox One’s main archrival – the PS4 can participate in cross-platform online gameplay thanks to Fortnite

It would also affect the ability for a games studio to port a game across all platforms and assure a similar online play experience no matter the platform. Here it wouldn’t matter whether the online play was about competing with other players including earning your place on one or more leaderboards, participating in a “virtual-world” that the game is about or trading in-game goods in a game-hosted marketplace.

Gradually, Sony and Microsoft. along with most games studios allowed a limited form of “cross-play” (online play of the same game from gaming devices of different gaming platforms) by allowing for, for example, a Windows regular computer to become a player in an online game with a games console. But with Fortnite, Microsoft and Nintendo brought their latest consoles to the “cross-play” party.

Now Sony have opened up the path towards third-party game studios implementing multi-platform online and network gameplay for their games titles. This is through an open beta program where a version of Fortnite with this true multiplatform cross-play code integrated but this code is really test code that may not be stable. It will be seen by Sony to be a proving ground for true multiplayer multiplatform online gaming involving all computing devices including gams consoles with them “opening up” the PlayStation platform for more cross-platform online gameplay.

This was as a result of “people power” with Fortnite fans complaining to Sony about ignoring the large PS4 installed base when it came to cross-platform gameplay especially as other regular, mobile and console platforms allowed for this kind of gameplay with very little friction.

Personally I see this as a seachange for network and online multiple-machine gaming especially in the games-console space. Here it could be about allowing third-party game developers including indie studios to create these kind of gameplay experiences but allow users to join these experiences no matter the console that they have.

With the rise of Fortnite, it can open up the idea of porting a game that has online or network play across every gaming platform while assuring users that they can game online no matter what they use. It can even lead towards increased interest in massively-multiplayer-online games especially where they could be played on a laptop, a smartphone or a console connected to the big TV.

DLNA media playback comes to the PS4

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Sony PS4 Media Player media list screenshot courtesy of Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony PS4 Media Player media list

The PlayStation 4 is getting a media player | Engadget

From the horse’s mouth

Sony PlayStation

Blog Post

My Comments

A feature that has been considered missing from the Sony PlayStation 4 is the ability for it to be a media player whether working with media on an optical disk, USB storage or the DLNA Home Media Network. This was a feature that was baked in to the PlayStation 3 and was highly valued. It is also a feature that is part of the XBox One’s software and having media-playback abilities in a games console underscores the trend for these devices to be an “all-round” entertainment device that works with the large-screen TV.

This trend is underscored with the consoles having integrated Blu-Ray players along with such things as TV-tuner devices being available for the XBox One along with “front-end” software being available for the popular video-on-demand services like Netflix for these consoles. This appeal is underscored amongst young people who live in a small apartment or bungalow and have as their TV a small bargain-basement model without the full smart-TV functionality and they see these consoles adding all of the desired functionality.

Sony PS4 menu screenshot courtesy of Sony Computer Entertainment

Look for this in the PS4’s menu to download the Media Player

Sony received subsequent user feedback about what the PS4 could offer and one of the features that was called out by their customers as being of need was a media player. Now they have issued it as an app that can be downloaded from the PlayStation Store with an icon in the Content area of the PS4’s System Menu to invite you to download the software. This will work with content on USB storage or your DLNA-equipped NAS or computer.

It can handle most of the popular media codecs and file types as well as being able to run music files as background music. It should be available for download over the next few days so you can get the PS4 becoming more fully-fledged as a media centre.

What has happened about the faulty firmware issue for the PS3

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Sony releases PS3 firmware update to fix last week’s fiasco | Tech Culture – CNET News

Instructions – From the horse’s mouth

Sony PlayStation

Manually updating your PS3 with the firmware

Safe Mode on PS3

My Comments

Sony PS3 games console

Sony PS3 games console – latest firmware should be 4.46

Previously, when Sony rolled out version 4.45 of the PlayStation 3 operating software, this update had caused many PS3s not to boot properly for interactive use. The situation had been described where the consoles were effectively “bricked” and Sony had to immediately pull the update from their PS3 software-update servers.

Now they have released version 4.46 of this firmware and made it available also as a manual-update file so you can recover a PS3 that had suffered this fate. When this situation had occurred with the PS3, the version-4.45 software went in to an “endless-loop” during startup thus not reaching the standard “XMB” start menu.

Fortunately, Sony had set up a “safe mode” for the PS3 in a similar way to what Microsoft, Apple and others have offered as a diagnostic startup option for their regular-computer operating systems. Here, this places the equipment in a known state with minimum software and hardware overhead that allows one to perform diagnostic or recovery work on faulty equipment.

In this case, you can load the firmware from a USB memory key and Sony have provided instructions on how to go about this, such as which folder to position the firmware file on the USB memory key. Here, you would need to use your desktop or laptop computer to download the firmware file to the USB memory key in the known location (\PS3\UPDATE).

Here they also detailed how to place the PS3 in to the aforementioned “safe mode” so you can load the firmware from the USB memory key. As well, you would have to connect the game controller to the PS3 via a USB cable while it is in this mode and be sure to select the “System Update” option on the menu that pops up to start this update without destroying your data and settings.

As well, I would suggest that you check that the version of the firmware on your PS3 is indeed 4.46 or newer in order to make sure that your console is behaving in a reliable manner.

An issue that could be raised regarding field-updatable firmware especially for consumer-electronics devices is providing a fail-safe update process with a rollback mechanism. This is more of an issue when there are situations like bugs that missed the quality-control process; failed download / install processes or, at worst, malware written in to field-updated firmware.

Here, the previous firmware could be kept in a separate section of flash memory or secondary storage, as well as the ability for the device to start in to safe mode thus providing the option for software rollback if the software didn’t start to the normal user interface.  Similarly, the standard user interface could be used as a way to facilitate this kind of software rollback, which can come in handy with bugs that creep up during normal operation. This is similar to what has been achieved with most desktop operating systems like Microsoft Windows, where the operating system creates “system restore points” at the start of software install or update processes and is able to roll back to these points if the install or update becomes dysfunctional.

What we are starting to see is that devices like games consoles, smart TVs and printers are becoming as sophisticated as regular computers and entering a point where the same kind of irregularities could creep up on them.

The second screen is now becoming relevant for console-based video gaming

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PS4 to get companion social app for tablets, PS Vita |Engadget

My Comments

Just today (21 February 2013), Sony was premiering the PlayStation 4 games console at their press event in New York City. They were promoting advanced “polygon-free” graphics which yielded realistic game views as well as support for “cloud-driven” console gaming.

This included various social-gaming options including the ability for an experienced astute player to help a novice player by effectively adding “dual controls” to the novice player’s controller. It is a feature that could have come in handy during a time when a friend of mine brought around the original PlayStation and rented a cricket game to play on the console. A person who lived with us had very keen interest in cricket and showed interest in this game but needed assistance with the video-game implementation of the sport.

But this console supports the new trend of the “second screen”. This option, which is implemented using apps on mobile-device platforms, is being explored by broadcasters and others with regular programmes but is being taken further by Sony for the PlayStation platform.

Most likely this concept would be positioned for social gaming, persistent scoreboards / inventory lists, alternate views such as overview maps, and similar activities to gain more out of the game. Of course, there will be the doubters that will say that the second screen is irrelevant especially for first-person shooters and similar games.

It will also be interesting to observe how much “in-sync” with the gameplay the second screen hosted on a separate device connected to the home network would be especially if extra action is to be viewed on this screen. Personally, I would make sure that you have the proper bandwidth available to your tablet when you want this function to work properly with the PS4.

A good idea would be to make sure that the Wi-Fi is strong to the games room and this could be achieved through the use of an access point with the wired network backbone. For that matter, most of the HomePlug AV wireless access points also have the Ethernet connections which can make this task easier with the PS4 connected to an Ethernet socket on the HomePlug access point while the HomePlug AV segment serves as the backbone.

Of course, this new console has a lot to be expected for its role in the lounge room, or the games room.

Is this what the new super slim PlayStation 3 is all about

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Sony unveils super slim PlayStation 3 | Crave – CNET

Sony PlayStation 3 2012 up close and personal eyes on | Engadget

From the horse’s mouth

US Press Release

European Press Release

My Comments

The press have been afield with the news about Sony’s latest PlayStation 3 games console. But this one is a major redesign to cope with the smaller space that newer consolidated electronics can occupy. This has yielded a smaller console that is significantly lighter and doesn’t use as much power as the existing units.

One main difference is that it has a top-loading Blu-Ray drive for your games and movies. This uses a sliding lid in a similar vein to some CD players like the B&O Beocenter 9000 series music systems rather than the hinged lid that, in my opinion, is asking for problems. 

There are two main design variants – one with a 500Gb hard disk and a cheaper variant with 12Gb flash memory with the ability to add in an optional 250Gb hard disk. The American market would have the console come with the 250Gb hard disk in the box. The cheaper version may work with occasional gamers and those of us who use the PS3 more as a network media client rather than as the full-on games console.

Of course there will be access to the PlayStation Network and the local video-on-demand services that has allowed the PS3 to earn its keep as a network multimedia terminal rather than just a games console for teenagers and young men. It will also have the same performance expectations as the current-generation PS3.

But could these variants be a way to bring the PlayStation Experience to more households or allow one to increase the feasibility for more of the multi-player multi-machine gaming from this console?

New changes coming ahead for the handheld PlayStation Experience

Articles

Sony’s official NGP announcement video hits the web | Engadget

PSP Reborn: The Quad-Core Next Generation Portable (NGP) | Sony Insider

Your Guide To The Sony Next-Generation Portable | CNET Crave

Sony annonce sa "3DS killer" | TF1.fr (France – French language)

My Comments

Sony have implemented a few changes for the PlayStation Gaming Platform which will be affecting this platform as a handheld-gaming platform. What they have realised is that the PlayStation Portable or PSP has reached its peak and is facing competition from the iOS and Android mobile devices when it comes to handheld gaming.

NGP – Next-Generation Portable

This console, which is intended to be the successor to the PSP has also been rated as a a “Nintendo 3DS-killer” according to TF1 in France.

It has a 5” AMOLED touchscreen but there are still the control buttons that eager gameplayers can keep “mashing”; as well as two analogue joysticks for its control options. Like the iOS and Android devices, there will be support for sensors. These will be in the form of a GPS, gyroscope and accelerometer as well as a front camera and a back camera as well as rear touchpads.

All these sensors are there to permit “augmented reality” and other enhanced gaming experiences. Examples of this included looking around sports-type games in a first-person form such as looking around a pool table or golf tee before hitting off that shot.

The gaming performance has been improved over the PSP with use of a quad-core Cortex A9 processor, 512Mb RAM and PowerVR SGC 543 MP4+ graphics subsystem. This then can allow for some of the more heavier titles that will appeal to a lot of the players.

This console will have network connectivity in the form of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. But there will be versions that will come with 3G wireless-broadband technology, in a similar vein to the smartphones and tablet computers.

I often wonder whether this connectivity will allow for more than downloading of games and extras from the PlayStation Store or playing games via the the PlayStation Network. The applications that I am thinking of include peer-to-peer gaming; interaction with the DLNA Home Media Network or interoperability with the PS3 games console.

The storage in this console consists of an SDHC card slot for user-data storage as well as 16Gb on board/ But Sony are also using a new flash-memory-based cartridge format for distributing pre-packaged games.

As far as games availability goes for the initial run, most of the games that are available for the PS3 are intended to be ported to this console. It will be interesting to see what games will take advantage of the touchscreen and the sensors that this handheld has.

I also wonder whether the games will make use of the relatively-large choice of user interfaces that this console offers such as the buttons and joysticks, the touchscreen or the sensors. This is whether as alternative interfaces or as interfaces that are particular to the game or part thereof.

PlayStation Experience for Android – PlayStation Suite

As well, Sony intend to bring out a “PlayStation Suite” app for certain Android phones so that these can be played like the PSP or the NGP. The big question that I have about this is which phones will be able to run this software and whether there will be the full range of games on this platform. This could certainly put Apple on notice when it comes to the smartphone as a gaming platform, because of the PlayStation platform’s prowess with the advanced games like the Final Fantasy series of adventure games.

At the moment, this PlayStation Experience will be limited to an emulator which will be used to play the games that existed for the original Sony PlayStation console.

Conclusion – What could happen to the PlayStation brand?

The introduction of sensors and touchscreens to the PlayStation Experience could allow Sony to add extra dimensions to the games available for this platform and use the PlayStation name as a reference point for console and mobile gaming. Who knows whether Sony will extend this brand to premium Windows and MacOS X games that are meant to be played on those “gaming rigs”?