Earlier this year, PlayStation announced that cloud streaming would be coming to select PS5 titles for PlayStation Premium members. Titles available for streaming will come from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Game Trials as well as supported digital PS5 titles that players own. Today, selected users have revealed that the beta testing for cloud streaming has begun.
“When this feature launches, cloud game streaming for supported PS5 titles will be available for use directly on your PS5 console,” Sony said when the feature was revealed. “That means as a Premium member, it’ll be easier to jump into your favorite games without downloading them first onto your PS5 console.”
It added: “As more games continue to launch on the PS5 console, we look forward to adding cloud streaming capability for PS5 titles in addition to the PS3, PS4 and classic titles that are already available for Premium members to stream.”
According to those who have been selected, there are 4 options of resolution for players to choose from: 720p, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. It differs from Xbox Cloud Streaming with its support of 4k resolution.
SIE CEO Jim Ryan talked about PlayStation’s cloud streaming initiative earlier this year saying “We observe mobility in gaming habits to be an increasingly important trend, and the cloud will be fundamental to allowing us, or indeed anybody else, to exploit that trend. We do have some fairly interesting and quite aggressive plans to accelerate our initiatives in the space of the cloud that will unfold over the course of the coming months.”
Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida commented on cloud-based gaming saying that there are technical issues that still remain with cloud streaming.
“I think cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to games, the technical difficulties are high,” said Yoshida, citing latency, which refers to the time it takes for an action inputted on the controller to be reflected on screen, as the biggest issue. “So there will be challenges to cloud gaming, but we want to take on those challenges.”