Back in the day I managed, after an awful lot of fiddling, to hook my PlayStation 3 up to my PSP for about two minutes whilst at home and it barely worked. It was a bit useless to be honest, there were very few games to play so all you could do was fiddle about on the XMB.
In his initial overview of the features, Blair could not get the PS4 and PS Vita Remote Play to work over the internet, so I was not holding out much hope that I would get any response from the system, considering that I was at work and the public WiFi here is rather slow. I had already synced up my Vita with my PlayStation 4 on launch day and I knew its big brother was in standby mode at home, but even so I didn’t expect it to work.
Nevertheless I turned on the Vita, tapped the PS4 Link icon and selected Remote Play. The Vita then spent about 30 seconds looking for my PS4 on the local network and obviously failed to find it, so went off to search the internet, the screen helpfully explaining this may take a few minutes.
Thirty seconds later the screen changed, and there was my PS4. It had worked! No fuss, no hassle, click a few icons and there was the new PS4 UI in glorious blue. I will admit to being utterly amazed when I realised that it had worked, Remote Play is one of those things that seems like a good idea that never works in practise, but it had.
It was time to try some games, so I clicked over to Resogun and within seconds of it loading up, the title screen was in front of me and the music was playing. There seemed to be a small amount of lag on the controls but as I mentioned earlier, I was running on a rather useless WiFi connection. The graphics occasionally glitched but again I put this down to a dodgy internet connection in the office (I run 100mb fibre optic at home, so it’s not that).
I have since tested Flower, Killzone single player and multiplayer, Contrast, DC Universe Online and Warframe on my Vita over the internet and they all worked. Killzone multiplayer was the worst in terms of graphical glitches and lag, probably because the PS4 is uploading data to the servers as well as trying to stream, so I spent most of time as a sniper but it was just about playable.
You probably won’t be able to play games – or at least not as well – that require split second decisions such as Need For Speed via Remote Play, but for slower paced games such as Contrast or Flower the tech works perfectly (including the Vita tilt controls mapping for those in a DualShock 4 in Flower), and the important thing to remember is this tech works now, today. So, in a couple of years from now, broadband speeds should have increased further and the graphical hiccups should vanish completely.
The only problem I can see is I that I still prefer to buy disc versions of games and obviously while you are miles away from the PS4 you cannot change discs. I shall be giving the Remote Play a through testing over Christmas whilst back at the folks, and if it works well then I may just have to start buying digital copies of games.
Have you had any luck with Remote Play over the internet?
Greg Turner
Mine is ok at home but it very hiot and miss at work – I’m guessing due to the connection here in the office?
cam the man
I’ve only tried remote play once but it worked just fine. It’s a great feature to have and I can see myself using it a lot in the future.
I wonder what the lag would be like from Waikiki beach?
Tuffcub
Will let you know in February.
double-o-dave
Its quite strange, as what I’ve read so far nearly everyone seems to have a better internet connection at home than at work (in an office) including me. I would have thought it would be the opposite.
Broonba
If you had saw my shitty internet speeds then you would soon change your tune. My Sky remote has better bandwidth than my Internet….
and yes, it’s that bad :(
Vallon
Interesting article. Think this would be impossible for me with my rubbish 1.1MB upload. Be interesting to see how it pans out in the future, I’d think 4G would be sufficient to play remote play providing you have good upload at home – tethering your 4G phone to the Vita… hum!
mrfodder
I’ve found Assassin’s Creed is a great one for the remote play. Not too fast moving and it has work seemlessly from work. Really is great technology and definitely my big WOW! from the new generation.
Zephyre
Didn’t work for me the only time I’ve tried it. Might stick my PS4 on a wired connection rather than WI-Fi and try again over Christmas
MrJimmy
Dammit. Just bought a ps4 player edition and games, then a Sony Xperia z1, today I’ve discovered I NEED a smart watch and now a vita too £££ it’s the end of the recession people
shields_t
Sadly I couldn’t get mine to work but that’s for two reasons – the proxy server on the wifi internet here at work is borderline censorship, and when I tried tethering to the 4G on my phone, I wasn’t expecting much and sure enough, it wouldn’t connect.
ArrebatoTarugo
Can’t wait to buy my Vita! I am only interested in remote play at home.
Playing a game while my other half is watching Corrie… As good as it gets!
MuggleMind
I eventually managed to get my remote play to work, but had all sorts of fun and games doing so. The most frustrating thing I found was (after several days of trying different settings) remote play will not work over 3G. So, for vita games I was fine tethering to my phone, but not for PS4 connectivity.
For set up, I needed static IP on my network for the PS4. Check your PS4’s network settings, write down the mac address, and add it to your router’s non-DHCP addresses. Then I had to put the PS4 in the DMZ – again, done on your router. This effectively makes it directly connected to the internet. The final stage at home was my router’s firewall – I was in a hurry, so after finding all the previous still hadn’t worked, I turned the firewall off completely (*listens to gasps of shock, horror, and the “not doing that, mad fool!” comments*). I could have spent time trying to open different ports, but as I have all linux machines here, it’s not such a frightening step. At work, even with a really crap wifi, I generally good a good connection – killzone campaign ran like a charm when I showed it off yesterday!
However, I also found that my work connection can be really affected by the weather too! When I tried on Wednesday, during Lhe thick fog that was blanketing Westminster, I was barely able to get a connection, and it would drop every few seconds.
For those only interested in remote play at home, I can only say it works incredibly well. Have now kicked my wife out, and am taking the vita to bed in future (well, I would, but the PS4 is officially a Christmas present from her). :)