I still disagree that they would do it this way (running PS1 and PSP games under emulation on PS3, therefore limiting them to streaming). Let's consider the following points:
- PS1 games have added input lag on PS3.
- The only PSP games available on PS3 are Minis. While I personally like a lot of the Minis, I don't know if those are the games that immediately came to mind for most people when this article mentioned "PSP games".
Yes, obviously native offline emulation on PS4/PS5 would be better for many reasons and would open the door to several improvements. But as I mentioned, it would require more work/costs/paperwork. And not sure if Sony and the publishers would be interested on it when the amount of people interested on PS1 and PSP games is going to be relatively small. The streaming only option in addition to require less work/costs/paperwork would also work on PC and mobile.
Can't remember which ones were, but as I remember there were more PSP/Vita compatible games on PS3 in addition to the Minis. Not sure if were called PS Mobile or something like that.
There's also the option to include a native, local PS One and PSP emulator on thier PS Now PC and mobile client but again, it means more costs.
If we're talking licensing rights, then I'd suspect that Sony would have to negotiate streaming rights for whatever PS1 games and PSP games Minis that they intend to offer. If they have to go through all that hullabaloo, then they might as well just use emulation running on PS4. This would give many benefits, one of which is the ability to sell the games individually through the PlayStation Store (something that they could not do if restricted only to streaming). I'd guess that third parties would love to have the ability to rack up actual sales of the games from paying customers.
Yep, maybe. But I think it would be less painful than to negotiate rights to release games for a new console. If streaming, they wil be streaming existing & already published PS3 games so they would have already solved the 'releasing the game on a new console' paperwork and licensing for these games.
I think Sony and the publishers know the amount of people interested on PS One and PSP is relatively low. So won't want to spend a lot of work on it and will prefer an approach that would allow them to include the maximum amount possible of games and to bring them to the maximum amount of players possible while requiring them the minimum cost/effort/amount of headaches possible.
Nah. You started out well but then your bias took over. Pretty much everyone in the industry sees at this point that there is a huge amount of money to be made via subscriptions. It really is the future. Even for Sony. People can still prefer a console but play other system's games on it happily. Just because they can play Xbox games on their PS5 it doesn't mean they no longer want to use a Sony console and DualSense controller. It just means they own and enjoy a Sony console, use and enjoy the Sony controller, and pay for subscriptions to several different gaming services. Everybody wins.
Yes, there is a huge amount of money to be made with game subscriptions. Sony is the one making the biggest amount of money with game subscriptions and like the other ones year after year they keep increasing their subscribers. But it's still a very small portion of their revenue compared to the revenue they make with sales (of games, add-ons like DLC and MTX and consoles), which in case of Sony and Nintendo is also growing (MS doesn't detail their numbers so we don't know if it's the case too).
Which means that Sony and Nintendo will continue primarly betting on their own consoles and selling games and add-ons for them. And even if they will continue betting on subscriptions and tweaking them to improve their performance, these services will continue being something secondary for them. Sony and Nintendo are breaking gaming history records with their current strategies, so they have no reason to change them too much. And this means they will continue using (in many cases timed and or console) exclusivity of their games and services as selling point for their consoles.
MS saw they couldn't compete selling consoles and games for them, so expanded slowly moved their focus to PC, their main platform as corporation, and specially to subscriptions with an all in bet on Game Pass to see if they can dominate Sony at least in game subscriptions.
With this merge or PS Plus and PS Now, now Sony's and MS's game subscriptions will be more similar and comparable, with still some differences like the day one releases, the amount of games included there, different kind of availability on platforms etc. And in the amount of subscribers and money made, with Sony having a big lead.
No worries, good luck.
