Sony is coming in strong with cloud streaming and unrivaled resolution.
We reported on some future plans that Sony has up their sleeve recently. During their recent PlayStation presentation, they showed off tidbits of software and hardware, such as their mysterious Project Q.
But, it was Microsoft’s recent court case against the FTC that displayed Sony’s 2023 holiday lineup. Sony is adding to that list with cloud streaming.
PlayStation is slowly rolling out the beta randomly to PSN users. There doesn’t seem to be a specific methodology to who is getting it and when, but people are already talking.
The news about Sony’s cloud streaming isn’t surprising. What is surprising, however, is that they’re offering 4K resolution for games. For comparison, not even Xbox Cloud Streaming offers that.
The closest approximation is the now-defunct Stadia service, which offered 4K and HDR upscaling from 1080p during its short lifespan. It, however, didn’t actually “run” in 4K. Seriously, there was an entire class-action lawsuit about this exact detail. It was messy.
According to users that have already been invited, the beta allows some games to be played in 720p, 1080, 1440p, all the way up to 2160p (AKA 4K). After trying 2160p on God of War: Ragnarok, one user mentioned that they were having “no issues so far”.
The picture shown in the post on Resetera by user ArashiGames allows you to choose the max resolution. If your network connection or TV can’t handle the stress, it’ll automatically dumb it down.
The good news is that, seemingly, all PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers will get the cloud streaming functionality for free when it is officially out.
While not directly mentioned anywhere in people’s discussions about it, there is a possibility that this could have a future tie-in with Project Q, Sony’s upcoming portable system that ties to your PS5.