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Digital Foundry: Hands-on with PS4's PlayStation 2 emulation

That FPS increase pleases me greatly. Bring on some real classics!

Seems like a PCSX2-esque thing with a 60FPS "hack"/tweak from the looks of it.

You'd probably get a better experience with 80% of your games on PCSX2 than this to be honest. It can play your disc games straight from the drive and can go way beyond the PS4's capabilities in terms of performance and res scaling (as well as mods for some games but let's leave that for now).
 
Watching someone play Racer on our PS4, it stands up surprisingly well in the first person view. It's all a bit blurry bit looking at the shots on Digital Foundry, that appears to b due to their upload rather than the game.

EDIT:
I mean watching somebody on Live From PlayStation playing it rather than watching somebody actually playing it on our PS4.
 
I guess a lot of people forgot that Sony didn't announce the PS2 emulator for PS3 either, we only found out about it when SCEA put some PS2 games on the store one week.

Also, no way on earth this works with disc games.
 
If PS1/PS2 games were to appear on PS Now why would Sony go to the trouble of creating an emulator for those games?

How else would they run those games on PS Now? PS Now is a device agnostic service, it's meant to be used on smartphones, TVs, potatos, etc. Not just on PS4.
 
Disc emulation would be a killer counter to 360 emulation. It would be such a treat for gamers, but Sony would rather charge $10 for a tiny percentage of the PS1/2 catalog than allow disc based emulation.
 
Disc emulation would be a killer counter to 360 emulation. It would be such a treat for gamers, but Sony would rather charge $10 for a tiny percentage of the PS1/2 catalog than allow disc based emulation.

My hope is that they offer Cross-Buy™ for anyone who purchased PS1/PS2 classics before.
 
Seems like a PCSX2-esque thing with a 60FPS "hack"/tweak from the looks of it.

You'd probably get a better experience with 80% of your games on PCSX2 than this to be honest. It can play your disc games straight from the drive and can go way beyond the PS4's capabilities in terms of performance and res scaling (as well as mods for some games but let's leave that for now).

Yeah, but trophies! :D

I've thrown out all my PS2 games anyway, so this is good in my book. Better not start releasing shitty 50hz versions in PAL land though... Of course they're going to do that.
 
Uh, i didn't say anything about that.

This whole thing has only been about PS Classics(aka digital ISO wrappers) from the very start.

PS1 and PS2 classics will be supported, but will be digital only. That's what Sony's new policy is from what i've gathered of their actions.

I'm honestly confused by this sentence:

This whole thing has only been about PS Classics(aka digital ISO wrappers) from the very start.

People are discussing digital and physical support for PS1 & PS2 games, so how do you claim this whole thing is only about ISOs? I'm not trying to be clever or anything, I'm legitimately confused by how you decided this is only about digital distribution.

PS1 and PS2 classics will be supported, but will be digital only. That's what Sony's new policy is from what i've gathered of their actions.

The thing is, I don't think we have enough data to reach that conclusion.

There's the precedent of PS1 disc support for software emulation on PS3. The lack of disc support for PS2 software emulation could be attributed to how fragile that emulator was on PS3. Very few games ran perfectly, and allowing users to use their discs when it would expose them to glitches might have been part of why Sony blocked PS2 disc support for PS3s without hardware emulation.

PS Vita is not even worth bringing up, as that console does not support discs.

So yeah, we still don't know. If PS2 emulation on PS4 is very good, then that would be a completely new situation, and there could be a chance that Sony might allow discs to be used.
 
I'believe the purpose of PSNow is to be the "netflix" of videogames. It is not to provide BC to the PS4. PSNow is compatible with PS3, PSV, Sony and Samsung TVS. It's supposed to come to more TVs, iOS, and Android IIRC.

If what you guys are implying was Sony's true end goal, PSNow would not be compatible with any of the above, especially not the PS3.

I was responding to your assertion that it makes no sense not to have them on PSNow, not necessarily agreeing that it will never ever happen. It certainly could eventually, but I think they would probably choose a modified route of delivery.

As it stands, PSNow does not support PS1 and PS2 games and doing so would be cost prohibitive on devices that can play with an emulator. While they may eventually include some games to target various devices incapable of emulation, it would be a very small market with a very poor ROI which is likely why you haven't seen it happen yet. With a working emulator, Sony could allow users who have PSNow subs to download and play PS1 and PS2 games in the same manner as they do for PS Plus users. That wouldn't match their rental style options, but it would work perfectly with a Netflix style sup that allows access to a pool of games. So either way, it is either something that they will choose a different route for or else it will be a very minor option if they ever get around to it.
 
Very unlikely to get anything for free though, licensing issues and stuff.

The dream is:
- feed a legacy disk to your PS4
- unlock downloadable game, with added trophy support, and those damn 60hz for PAL games
 
My hope is that they offer Cross-Buy™ for anyone who purchased PS1/PS2 classics before.

They most likely will IMO.

Seems like a PCSX2-esque thing with a 60FPS "hack"/tweak from the looks of it.

You'd probably get a better experience with 80% of your games on PCSX2 than this to be honest. It can play your disc games straight from the drive and can go way beyond the PS4's capabilities in terms of performance and res scaling (as well as mods for some games but let's leave that for now).

Meanwhile, for those of us looking for an official solution, i think this is a good trade off. I only hope they keep the PS1 and PS2 sections well stocked, and use those for PS+ instead of just indies
 
So yeah, we still don't know. If PS2 emulation on PS4 is very good, then that would be a completely new situation, and there could be a chance that Sony might allow discs to be used.

Sony has, from start, been aiming to make the PS4 what the PS3 should have been. If the PS4 ends up offering superior PS1 and PS2 BC, that goal will finally have been achieved.
 
Very unlikely to get anything for free though, licensing issues and stuff.

The dream is:
- feed a legacy disk to your PS4
- unlock downloadable game, with added trophy support, and those damn 60hz for PAL games

All PSone and a good amount of PS2 titles are on CD-Rom, though, which PS4 doesn't support on a hardware level.
 
im ready

AhB7mGuh.jpg
 
Very unlikely to get anything for free though, licensing issues and stuff.

The dream is:
- feed a legacy disk to your PS4
- unlock downloadable game, with added trophy support, and those damn 60hz for PAL games

May be small fee to get the digital copy for those with discs because its providing additional benefits like trophies and updated graphics/fps. Sony is not desperate to allow XB1 like disc support, so they will surely want to make money out of this emulation and likely 3rd parties too.
 
I'm honestly confused by this sentence:



People are discussing digital and physical support for PS1 & PS2 games, so how do you claim this whole thing is only about ISOs? I'm not trying to be clever or anything, I'm legitimately confused by how you decided this is only about digital distribution.



The thing is, I don't think we have enough data to reach that conclusion.

There's the precedent of PS1 disc support for software emulation on PS3. The lack of disc support for PS2 software emulation could be attributed to how fragile that emulator was on PS3. Very few games ran perfectly, and allowing users to use their discs when it would expose them to glitches might have been part of why Sony blocked PS2 disc support for PS3s without hardware emulation.

PS Vita is not even worth bringing up, as that console does not support discs.

So yeah, we still don't know. If PS2 emulation on PS4 is very good, then that would be a completely new situation, and there could be a chance that Sony might allow discs to be used.

What i said was, even back when Shu signaled that emulation for PS1 and PS2 would be easier than using a PSNOW solution back in 2013, it was going to be about PS1 and PS2 Classics and not disk based emulation.

There has never been anything signalling possible support for PS1/2 disk based emulation on PS4, it has always been about PS1 and PS2 classics.

So, it only makes sense for them to focus on that and not disk support. And so i don't see where people expecting disk based support are coming from, cause it obviously isnt happening
 
I'm confused as to how a company releasing a straight port of an old game couldn't make the left and right side of the trackpad act as start and select.

Or that a straight port wouldn't fit the criteria of their evidence.
 
Can you provide a source for that? I was pretty sure that the PS4 Blu-Ray reader also has a laser for CDs.

There was a stink about this around launch, if my memory serves me correctly. A handful here:

"Supported Disc Formats" from Sony's site.

Push Square snippet.

I think it boiled down to the Ps4's laser not having the ability to read CD-Roms, making playback and Ps1 a non-starter.

Yes it does. It just isn't currently configured to do anything with CD-ROM discs.

Help clear this up- do you have a source for that? Maybe we can put that to bed.
 
It seems like those games are exclusive to owners of SW Battlefront bundle (even though they were available for PS3 some time ago).

Fuck :/

EDIT: I think Sony is quiet about that, because MS has better solution than them - emulating newer console. Or maybe I'm wrong. Still, I was suprised to read the title of the article at first.
You are wrong ps2 emulation is huge
 
There was a stink about this around launch, if my memory serves me correctly. A handful here:

"Supported Disc Formats" from Sony's site.

Push Square snippet.

I think it boiled down to the Ps4's laser not having the ability to read CD-Roms, making playback and Ps1 a non-starter.



Help clear this up- do you have a source for that? Maybe we can put that to bed.

I think they asked Cerny about it, and he told everyone it's not about the laser. Remember, practically no one supports (S)VCDs anymore, so the only thing that it would be good for was old Audio CD - and at the moment Sony pushed Music Unlimited... hard.
 
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