New Playstation Plus Subscription Tiers [2022-03-29]

[Silent_Buddha]

I don't know if Sony ever ha server blades for PS3, there are many pictures of custom PS3s in custom racks. This seems mental but it was was probably cheaper and quicker to adapt mass produced consoles than make what is going to be a relatively small number of bespoke server blades.

The proposition for Microsoft is a bit different because I imagine that whilst not ideal, they can use re-purpose unused Series X server hardware for other non-gaming customer needs by Azure customers. I would expect them to be able to do this fairly quickly and flexibly. Modern server management is like that.

That just made me think of something. I wonder if MS is repurposing XBS-X consoles that have been returned due to some defect into server blades rather than refurbishing them and selling refurbished consoles.

So, just out of curiosity, I went looking at E-bay to see how many refurbished consoles of each were available. There are currently 87 refurbished PS5's available while only 28 refurbished XBS-X consoles are available.

Not necessarily conclusive evidence one way or the other, but it kind of supports the notion that MS might possibly doing that as a way to increase XBS-X server infrastructure to mitigate the hit to sales of new XBS-X consoles. Of course, it could also just be evidence that XBS-X consoles are suffering fewer defects than PS5 that require replacing a user's console with a new one.

As well, without knowing the costs involved (I don't imagine the server blades are using the same PCBs, for example), it's difficult to know how economically feasible that would be. And thinking about it more, even if it were economically feasible, the volume of said consoles would likely be pretty insignificant.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

That just made me think of something. I wonder if MS is repurposing XBS-X consoles that have been returned due to some defect into server blades rather than refurbishing them and selling refurbished consoles.

They do sell refurbished consoles on the Microsoft US website. Those have fluctuated out of stock more than new Series X consoles.

 

[BRiT]

Initial reports of PS1 titles using the PAL 50 Hz version.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1528818787025358848

https://twitter.com/x/status/1528827653746315264

 

[Silent_Buddha]

What a strange decision considering that Japan is also NTSC - 60 Hz like the US.

Does this mean that Japan/SCEA has nothing to do with PS+ subscription back compatiblity games and it's just SCEE working on it and then other regions are thus stuck with the 50 Hz PAL versions?

Seems odd that they'd use that considering that all modern TV's made in the past 10-20 years support 60 Hz support. Although I guess in Japan they'd use the Japanese NTSC version of the games if PS+ subscription back compatibility is supported in Japan, so at least they get the superior NTSC version of games.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Seems odd that they'd use that considering that all modern TV's made in the past 10-20 years support 60 Hz support.

All modern TVs also support 50Hz. I have no idea how the upscaling works, but ancient games may look better upscaled from 576 lines (PAL) than 480 (NTSC).

 

[Nesh]

All modern TVs also support 50Hz. I have no idea how the upscaling works, but ancient games may look better upscaled from 576 lines (PAL) than 480 (NTSC).

But they play like garbage compared to their NTSC counterparts.
They feel like they are in slow motion. Its the Playstation Classic all over again which is odd.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

All modern TVs also support 50Hz. I have no idea how the upscaling works, but ancient games may look better upscaled from 576 lines (PAL) than 480 (NTSC).

Interesting trade off that I didn't really think about. A sharper image versus a better gameplay experience.

Obviously both are subjective to a degree as to which a person might prefer. Me being a gameplay above graphics sort of person immediately latched onto the 50 versus 60 Hz difference. I guess a more graphics oriented person may instead latch onto the 576 scanlines versus 480 scanlines difference.

Regards,
SB

 

[orangpelupa]

All modern TVs also support 50Hz. I have no idea how the upscaling works, but ancient games may look better upscaled from 576 lines (PAL) than 480 (NTSC).

Wait, what? The ps1 games are rendered at their native resolution, and then upscaled?

Why did Sony chose that method instead of running the games at higher resolution in the first place? To adhere to the original visual design vision as close as possible?

3d games can looks ridiculously good when rendered at higher resolution. For example zone of enders 2nd runner from ps2. Pepsiman on ps1. Despite the textures are still blocky. But obviously, that was not the original visual design vision.

 

[Cynicalking]

Maybe its about multi language support? PAL releases had multiple languages, NTSC seldom had more than english.

 

[see colon]

Maybe its about multi language support? PAL releases had multiple languages, NTSC seldom had more than english.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is why the PS1 classic used the PAL roms also. That's understandable, but they should have changed the emulator's settings to run them at the higher refresh rate. Then you get the best of both worlds.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But they play like garbage compared to their NTSC counterparts.
They feel like they are in slow motion. Its the Playstation Classic all over again which is odd.

For NTSC games, true. But then for PAL designed games, these could run too fast on NTSC. Hence the only sane option is picking the platform the game was designed for, complicated by a need for regionalisation.

 

[Nesh]

Interesting trade off that I didn't really think about. A sharper image versus a better gameplay experience.

Obviously both are subjective to a degree as to which a person might prefer. Me being a gameplay above graphics sort of person immediately latched onto the 50 versus 60 Hz difference. I guess a more graphics oriented person may instead latch onto the 576 scanlines versus 480 scanlines difference.

Regards,
SB

The perceived gains between the two resolutions is minimal if even observed by most compared to the smoother and faster framerates.
A graphics oriented person will appreciate the framerate and the gameplay.
I owned a PAL Playstation and the PAL games were annoying. When I modded my PS1 to play pirated and NTSC games I simply couldnt tolerate a lot of PAL games.
Especially in fighting games. It was disgustingly slow.
And what makes me really curious was that, the Sega Saturn PAL games didnt suffer as much if at all.
It is also interesting that any PAL game can actually run on NTSC on the Sega Saturn. Sega Saturn games appear to be a combination of hardware and what was encoded on the disk.
So if you ever mod your Sega Saturn you can actually make a PAL game run on NTSC mode and vise versa by flipping a switch which is impossible with PS1 were PAL games were hard coded to always run on PAL and NTSC games to always run on NTSC mode.

 

[Nesh]

For NTSC games, true. But then for PAL designed games, these could run too fast on NTSC. Hence the only sane option is picking the platform the game was designed for, complicated by a need for regionalisation.

I am a little confused by this. The chosen games that run on PAL mode on both the PS Classic and PS Plus actually run a lot better on NTSC.
They dont appear to be PAL designed games. PS Classic is even more guilty in this. Tekken 3 in PAL? They were insane.

 

[BRiT]

Its the Playstation Classic all over again which is odd.

Possibly they opted to use work that was already done from that effort instead of starting from 0?

The ideal choice is providing both versions inside the PS4 and PS5 targeted version and having a menu selection of what to launch.

 

[BRiT]

Initial reports that PS3 games or any streaming games on the service won't support DLC @ https://www.videogameschronicle.com...es-still-wont-support-dlc-on-ps-plus-premium/

https://twitter.com/x/status/1529058323802333185

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I am a little confused by this.

Games developed in PAL studios that targeted PAL by default and had the framerate dependent execution (like everything those days) would run 20% faster than the devs designed and tested for. That means anything Psygnosis/Studio Liverpool as I understand it.

https://www.ngemu.com/threads/pal-games-that-run-faster-than-intended-on-ntsc.159393/

Usually we have the opposite issue (NTSC games running slower on PAL systems), but there may be some games developed in Europe that actually run faster on NTSC systems.

Some candidates to check:

• Rayman
• Grand Theft Auto
• Driver
• Tomb Raider series
• Croc series
• Wipeout series
• Speed Punks
• RC Revenge
  
• Legacy of Kain - Soul Reaver
• MediEvil (reported here)
  
• Oddworld - Abe's Oddysee
• 40 Winks
• Heart of Darkness

I appreciate these are very much the minority though.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But they play like garbage compared to their NTSC counterparts.

Which look like garbage compared to their PAL counterparts!

The perceived gains between the two resolutions is minimal if even observed by most compared to the smoother and faster framerates.

It's like almost a 20% vertical resolution difference. Remember these games already looked like garbage on a screen that was much smaller than what many people are now using.

 

[orangpelupa]

Weird that any streaming titles won't support DLCs. I wonder if it's a licensing issue

It's like almost a 20% vertical resolution difference. Remember these games already looked like garbage on a screen that was much smaller than what many people are now using.

That makes Sony's decision to render at the games' native resolution even more baffling. Instead of rendering at 4k.

 

[see colon]

Increasing the rendering resolution can sometimes create visual artifacts. I think they are going for a consistently classic, authentic experience, which is fine I guess. The problem is that other Sony platforms that played PS1 games had ways to enhance them. PS2 had texture smoothing and fast loading, PS3 had a full screen filter that did a fair job removing jaggies while destroying image clarity. But you could also change the output resolution on PS3 when using HDMI from either 480p or upscaled to whatever your home screen resolution was set to. And there was analog output options.

Now that I think of it, one of the things about PS2 playing PS1 games (and some PS2 games) that is annoying is that the output resolution can be controlled by the software. So if you are using ypbpr component cables and your display doesn't support 240p and you play a PS1 game that's 240p (almost all of them are), then nothing gets displayed on your TV. The same is true for some PS2 games. There is a king of fighters or fatal fury collection that I know outputs 240p, and the arcade games on Tekken 5 are like this as well. I wonder if these issues persist on PS3 while playing ps1 games using component cables. Anyone tried it?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

That makes Sony's decision to render at the games' native resolution even more baffling. Instead of rendering at 4k.

I have no clue how older PlayStation gams worked internally, but I have emulated a bunch running on PC at 1080p, 1440p and 4K, and even when using game-specific patches and upscaling filters, the results as very varied. There is only so much you can do when the textures are inherently low res, the geometry limited, the draw distance measured in meters and the games are blasting pixels straight into the frame buffer.