Sony today announced plans to bring the PlayStation 4's Remote Play capabilities to the PC and Mac through an update that will be released tomorrow. With the update, PS4 owners will be able to play games remotely through a PC or a Mac.
Remote Play is a feature that lets the PlayStation 4 send audio and video to a peripheral device, but it was previously only compatible with Sony's handheld console, the PlayStation Vita, the PlayStation TV set-top box, and select Sony smartphones and tablets. Remote Play has been around since the PlayStation 3 and the PSP, but Sony has never made an effort to expand it before.
The decision to bring Remote Play to PCs and Macs comes after Microsoft introduced a remote gameplay feature for the Xbox One, allowing Xbox games to be played using a PC that runs Windows 10. Sony's feature is more robust as it also works with Macs and it works remotely -- the Xbox game streaming feature requires a connection through a home network.
Sony makes Remote Play compatibility a requirement for all PlayStation 4 games that don't use peripherals, so most users will find that their entire PS4 game catalogs can be streamed to a Mac or PC.
On Macs, Remote Play will work with the latest versions of Apple's OS X operating system, OS X 10.10 Yosemite and OS X 10.11 El Capitan. On PCs, the feature is compatible with machines running Windows 8.1 or 10 or later. A single DualShock 4 controller can be connected to a PC or Mac via a USB cable to serve as the gameplay controller for Remote Play.
Games can be played in several resolutions and at several frame rates, adjustable based on Internet bandwidth. Resolution defaults to 540p, but can be changed to 360p or a max of 720p. The default frame rate setting is 30fps, adjustable to 60fps.
Remote Play will be available as soon as the PlayStation 4 is updated tomorrow. Once the update goes out, Mac and PC users will be able to download the software to enable the feature from the PlayStation Remote Play website (download is not yet live).
