Thoughts on PS4 Link thus far…
This is going to be a pretty short post for once because there’s not much to say, but one of the things I was looking forward to with the purchase of my PS4 was the ability to stream games to my PS Vita using PS4 Link. In advertisements, people were able to log onto a wifi hotspot and play their PS4 games “anywhere.” Of course reviews told me that this was not the case, but many gave me hope that I would be able to at least play games from my couch in my room.
This is not the case. First of all I should mention that our router is behind my couch. We’re talking maybe a foot and a half of distance between the wifi router and the device, maybe three feet depending on if I’m sitting upright or reclined. The PS4 is on a wired connection, so there shouldn’t be much lag in theory. In practice, things went badly.
My initial test took place in the living room while I was entering the security code to link the two devices, so that’s maybe ten feet away from the router. But no matter where I tried to link the Vita and PS4, I couldn’t get a stable connection to last more than a few seconds. And I use the term stable real loosely here. From the living room, it wasn’t even possible to use the system menus without lag making the screen unreadable with lots of grey blocks. Maybe fifteen seconds after I connected, the router dropped the signal. I went to my room next and sat up to get as close to the router without putting it in my lap, and then I was at least able to load a game and walk a few steps before it lagged out again. I waited a few seconds for the screen to lose the jagged blocks, took two more steps, and then waited again. And then the connection was dropped.
Perhaps a future update will address these problems and make the app usable, but for now, my wild pipe dreams of playing PS4 games on the couch have been horribly crushed. I am now full of woe. Or something. Possibly poop. And woe.
Anyway, it’s a good thing this was only a minor reason for getting the PS4, as I like a few of the games exclusive to the system. But really, I wish Sony hadn’t hyped this feature because it simply does not work as advertised.
