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Do You Care About PlayStation on a PC?

Do You Care About PlayStation on a PC?

Sony just made some incredible announcements. First, you’ll be glad to know that PlayStation Now is officially on its way to PCs everywhere. The service just rolled out to PCs in the UK, Netherlands, and Belgium, and it’ll make its way to the US very shortly. If any of you are wondering whether or not PlayStation Now is worth it, the answer is yes. All of the best PS3 games are available to stream straight to your console or PC – games like The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection, Uncharted 1-3, The God of War series, Disgaea, The Last of Us, inFamous, and more. This isn’t some petty collection of bargain-bin titles. These are the big boys. Forget Bleem! This is the ultimate PlayStation-to-PC solution.

The PlayStation Now service is criminally underused on the PS4, mainly because there seems to be a common belief that streaming games in HD is impossible without debilitating input lag and graphical glitches. While this may be true for some of you, it certainly wouldn’t be true for most of you. If you have an upload / download speed of at least 7Mbps, you should be totally fine. Ping factors in, of course, so there’s a bit of a lottery there. Most users report lag-free play with very rare graphical hiccups. If you want to see how it works out for you, there’s a seven-day free trial available in the PlayStation Store.

Sony revealed something else in addition to PS Now coming to PC. A DualShock 4 USB wireless adaptor is also headed our way early in September. The dongle will cost a cool $25 and finally enable you to use the DS4 and all of its features when playing on PC. “This adaptor will let you connect a DualShock 4 to PC and Mac wirelessly, and will enable every feature of the controller you know and love: buttons, analog sticks, touch pad, light bar, motion sensors, vibration, and stereo headset jack – as long as the gaming application supports these features.” Thanks, PlayStation Blog, I was worried that the dongle wouldn’t allow me to use the buttons – those are my favorite feature.

Do You Care About PlayStation on a PC?

Seriously though, being able to fully use the controller wirelessly while playing PS3 games is going to rock. And you know what else we’re forgetting? Remote play! Remote play has been live for a few months now, and as long as you have a decent wireless connection, you’ll be able to play your PS4 games from your PC as well.

You do realize this makes any decent laptop in a home with any decent router the ultimate PlayStation companion device, right? Imagine lying in bed, exhausted and limp after a rough day of work. You’d like to play a game but your PS4 is across the house. No problem. You just open up your laptop, plug in your wireless adaptor, and boom: you now have your full PS4 library and hundreds of great PS3 games at your disposal. Plug your favorite pair of headphones into your controller so you don’t disturb your partner, and have at it. You can beat that boss in Bloodborne , then go play through a bit of Journey to unwind before dozing off.

Does this sell any of you on the PlayStation Now service? Knowing that you can play on any PC or laptop with a good internet connection, using your own DualShock 4, no less… does that make the subscription fee seem worth it? Let me know in the comments.

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