• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Playstation Now Beta: Game load times revealed

V

viveks86

Member
spwolf said:
this is not possible at all, not only it is inefficient, it means that the game would have to be designed for that.

PSNow has 8 servers in one case, running off some high speed network storage solution that has all the games available. When user logins, at minimum it will have to start one of these virtualized server instances, login user to the server and login user to the PSN. Then start the game that user selected. Game starting part can not be customized because then not all games will be compatible, only way this works is if it is setup the same way as your PS3.

So sure, they can customize everything thats in hardware and firmware, so they can have 8x cell's running in single case off single PSU, and they can have firmware that skips everything thats not necessary when it comes to loading OS, BUT they can not change anything when it comes to games, or else they will break game compatibility and it would be impossible to get publishers to go back and "adjust" their games to be compatible with PSNow.
Click to expand...

Though I don't agree with your previous "powering down" assertion, you are making sense here. Changing the way memory is accessed without drastically increasing porting costs would make this a far more complex, if not impossible endeavor.
 
V

viveks86

Member
cpp_is_king said:
Besides, if they're smart they will be using (or at least have explored the idea of) a one-game-per-PS3 architecture. So like they've got this one PS3, and all it does is play Disgaea 4. But it can play Disgaea 4 for more than one person. So you boot it up, the first thing it does is load all the resources for the entire game into memory. They have a virtual memory layer so that resources are always mapped into the same address region, and now someone else playing Disgaea 4 connects to this machine, and everything is already loaded.
Click to expand...

On second thoughts, I doubt if Sony has gone down the path of changing the way memory access works. Porting costs would make it prohibitive, unless they built all the custom functionality as part of some framework that is transparent to the game code. But if they had gone that far, they wouldn't have needed customized PS3 hardware to begin with. Might as well emulate everything in software. Clearly they haven't done that.
 
C

CaptainSlow

Member
50 seconds isn't that bad, I just worry what it will turn into when tens of thousands, if not hundreds are using it all at once instead of a few select in a beta.
 
BibiMaghoo

BibiMaghoo

Member
That is quite acceptable, but was never a main concern to begin with. It is all in how smooth they play, not how fast they boot.
 
Freeman

Freeman

Banned
This just make it unusable, who has 60 seconds to wait? I think we should boycott it.

Imagine if we had to wait 60 seconds for games that are running from disc? Oh, wait....
 
dolabla

dolabla

Member
It's not gonna kill me to wait 50 seconds etc. for the game to load. I'm not that picky. Just as long as the service works fine, I'll be good.
 
T

TomShoe

Banned
Khalifa Jayy said:
Entitled, whiny gamers blow things way out of proportion: the thread.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. It's not surprising at all considering the entire game is being streamed over the internet. Hopefully the time will go down as internet speeds and processing power increase.
 
K

KaOTiK

Banned
Not really sure why people are like like those times are bad. They are better then I expected. Game needs to load up/start and begin streaming to you.
 
J

johnny956

Member
Sony already said they are just custom ps3 boards in rack servers for this so loading times are going to be just as it was a normal ps3 game
 
N

nded

Member
viveks86 said:
All are less than a minute, which is great for a beta, but I hoped it was faster. Wouldn't it be cool if a game loaded like a movie did on netflix? Oh well…
Click to expand...

This would require them keeping a whole bunch of game instances running idle at the start menu instead of just launching a game right when a user requests it. Potentially lots of server and machine resources spent for a minor benefit.
 
J

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
viveks86 said:
It's there in the link. Didn't want to copy everything from the source and piss off dualshockers. :)
Click to expand...

Just checked it.....his connection speed is like early 2000's DSL. His speed is what they call basic internet now...maybe below basic. I think with cable you get 20Mbps down as the lowest now.

I am going at 50Mbps down, 10Mbps up. ....my body is ready.....
 
V

viveks86

Member
nded said:
This would require them keeping a whole bunch of game instances running idle at the start menu instead of just launching a game right when a user requests it. Potentially lots of server and machine resources spent for a minor benefit.
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree. That was just wishful thinking on my part :)

There still could be ways to manage it, though. They can look at typical usage patterns and start up a few instances per game. That way, more often than not, users would go straight into the menu. Sort of like "connection pooling". It's worth looking into in the future.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure there is lot of room to improve. 50 seconds is not all game loading time. They should be able to optimize whatever overhead there is in establishing connection/signing in etc, as the service matures.

jroc74 said:
Just checked it.....his connection speed is like early 2000's DSL. His speed is what they call basic internet now...maybe below basic. I think with cable you get 20Mbps down as the lowest now.

I am going at 50Mbps down, 10Mbps up. ....my body is ready.....
Click to expand...

Same here! :D
 
N

nded

Member
Just timed a disc copy of DOA5. it's like 37 seconds from XMB to title screen mashing through company logos.

Muzy72 said:
I like how minute load times for Sony is okay while 30 load second time on Wii U is unacceptable. :lol
Click to expand...

The Wii U got shit because parts of its console UI took 5-10 seconds to switch between menus before they patched it.
 
A

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Given that no data is loaded on system (You can't really buffer when you don't know the next frame), what's the delay?
Time for the server to actually load up the game?
I would expect the system to have servers with the games already loaded by the time it goes out of beta, honestly.
 
V

viveks86

Member
nded said:
Just timed a disc copy of DOA5. it's like 37 seconds from XMB to title screen mashing through company logos.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing! Might be interesting to see how long each of those games take to load on retail hardware. How long did it take to go to the company logos? Also, digital copies are probably a little faster. Let me know and I'll add it to the OP.
 
N

nded

Member
viveks86 said:
Thanks for sharing! Might be interesting to see how long each of those games take to load on retail hardware. How long did it take to go to the company logos? Also, digital copies are probably a little faster. Let me know and I'll add it to the OP.
Click to expand...

Disc copy of Puppeteer loads from XMB to title screen in about 43 seconds.

Edit: DOA5 logos show up about 20 seconds after booting. I noticed it took about 53 seconds to get to the title screen if you didn't skip the logos, so maybe this guy just isn't skipping them.
 
V

viveks86

Member
nded said:
Disc copy of Puppeteer loads from XMB to title screen in about 43 seconds.

Edit: DOA5 logos show up about 20 seconds after booting. I noticed it took about 53 seconds to get to the title screen if you didn't skip the logos, so maybe this guy just isn't skipping them.
Click to expand...

He says "splash screen". I wish I knew if that meant title screen or logos. I would think he is referring to the logos, since splash screens always refer to screens that appear for a moment and give way to the main screen. But they could very well be using the term incorrectly.
 
N

nded

Member
viveks86 said:
He says "splash screen". I wish I knew if that meant title screen or logos. I would think he is referring to the logos, since splash screens always refer to screens that appear for a moment and give way to the main screen. But they could very well be using the term incorrectly.
Click to expand...

Ah, that's something to consider. Most games seem to hover at around 50 seconds, though, so it can't have much to do with the size of the game image if that were the case. Maybe that's the amount of time it takes PSNow to allocate a machine, start a game and connect you to it?
 
V

viveks86

Member
nded said:
Ah, that's something to consider. Most games seem to hover at around 50 seconds, though, so it can't have much to do with the size of the game image if that were the case. Maybe that's the amount of time it takes PSNow to allocate a machine, start a game and connect you to it?
Click to expand...

Probably. If we can get a couple of startup videos from the beta, then it would really help. Also, the beta may not be indicative of final performance. Could be much better for all we know (or worse if they can't handle the real world network traffic as well).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

What single game have you purchased the most times alone (remakes don't count, but remasters do).
2 3
125
4K
Raven117 replied
Revealing 5 India Hero Project games coming to PlayStation
Game Dev
0
391
Thick Thighs Save Lives replied
Merge of Discovery and Warner Bros. renders PlayStation licensing agreement worthless. (Up: new licensing agreement, shows will not be removed)
2 3 4 5 6
255
19K
Dr. Wilkinson replied
PlayStation 3 Games That Desperately Need a PS5 Remaster/Remake
Opinion Platform 2
68
2K
Hoppa replied
50 Facts about the Playstation
Opinion Trailer Platform
16
2K
IbizaPocholo replied
Top Bottom