I will admit that I have never been a fan of game streaming, I think this stems from the fact that in its infancy (and I believe it’s still very much in its infancy) the structure wasn’t stable enough, coupled with internet speeds where I am not being great, it didn’t really make for an enjoyable experience.
Especially while trying Xcloud there were so many stutters and drops and the image would go so pixelated that it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. Fast forward a good 18 months and you’ve had Sony introduce the PS Portal, which is a remote play device for the PS5, you can play Xcloud pretty much on any device, even smart TVs. Now, in this time for me, the only thing that had changed was that I was going to try playing some game streaming on my MacBook Air and that my internet provider had changed (not my speeds, they remained the same at about 60mbps).
For the purpose of this article I am going to talk about the experiences I’ve had separately on Xcloud and streaming from my PS5.
Now, I shall start with the experience I’ve had playing my PS5 games through streaming. The reason I started doing this was because we have both our Xbox and PS5 hooked up to the main TV. So when my wife likes to watch TV or play on the Xbox, I can stream my PS5 to my MacBook and play those games while sitting next to her, this was the method behind my madness anyway. Going on my previous experience with game streaming, I wasn’t confident I would last very long.
I started off trying single player games, ones I knew wouldn’t take up any if much more bandwidth, so I started with Disney Dreamlight Valley and Fallout 4, which to my surprise played very well and I was able to have a few hours of game time in the evening on my PS5 while my wife also played Disney Dreamlight Valley on her Xbox. I’m not going to pretend that the games were perfect, I still had a few drops and freezes, which if I’m honest were only for anything up to a few seconds, but mostly I found the picture quality would drop before any stuttering of freezing would happen, which I was happy with as the game was still running and responsive. One thing that impressed me the most was there was no noticeable input lag, which did surprise me, I did expect there to be some, and there still might have been very minor ones but there was nothing noticeable.
I also tried Final Fantasy 16 which played brilliantly as well and again I have managed to get a few hours in the evening of playing through my MacBook Air. Now, this is where the PS5 wizardry blew my mind. I live a good 6 hour drive away from my family, so on a recent trip up there I decided while I had my MacBook with me and the PS Remote App staring at me, I would give game streaming from my PS5 a go. My mum has internet speeds of around 150mbps, so I decided to see if this little bump in speed at this end would allow me to play my PS5 which was sitting 300 odd miles away. I honestly wasn’t expecting anything, when it came up saying it was searching the internet for my PS5, I thought it would come back saying no connection could be found…. But I was wrong, my PS5 loaded up right in front of me. I connected a controller and loaded up Final Fantasy 16 and was stunned with how good it all felt, that again there was no noticeable input lag and that the game was playing as crystal clear as it would as if I was playing it on my TV at home.
I have been absolutely astonished with my experience of streaming from my PS5 and it has definitely given me another option for playing when the TV is in use.
Now, my experience with Xcloud has been quite a different one. While there are times when the quality holds up just fine, I found that their was a lot more drops and freezes than on my PS5, and that was from using my home network. When I was at my mums house using her speeds, I didn’t really have an issue with it and everything seemed to play fine. However, when I did try to play an online game like Fallout 76, this was a nightmare, the stuttering was constant and the experience wasn’t pleasant.
Games like Disney Dreamlight Valley played very well, and I even tried it through my phone with touchscreen controls, and while it played fine, the controls aren’t the best.
Overall my experience has been a mixed bag, the PS5 has been a more stable and enjoyable experience. I believe at home when I have full fibre internet, I can test this again and see, but from what I played at my mums house, it would definitely be a better experience on Xcloud.
I’m no network engineer, so have no idea how it all works as to why the PS5 performs better, but something like this does give justification for a device like the PS Portal existing. (However, I would still prefer a device I can download my PS5 games onto and play natively). You can read my experience with the PS Portal here.
No comments:
Post a Comment