Sony’s revamped PlayStation Plus service is beginning its slow launch across the globe, bringing users varying amounts of downloadable and streamable games – provided they subscribe at the right price. As the first concerted effort Sony has made to showcase its classic back catalog in the current generation of consoles, the new PS Plus scheme is significant. However, it might not be the best showcase for these classic games.
Early reports on social media surfaced first Chronicle of Video Games appear to show that some of the PlayStation 1 games offered on the service are the lower-performing PAL versions of games, as evidenced by lower frame rates and opening titles, crediting Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
In the pre-high definition era, regional video formats standardized TV performance parameters. In Europe, this format was called PAL and had a refresh rate of 50 Hz and a frame rate of 25 fps. In North America, the format was NTSC and had a higher refresh rate of 60 Hz and a standard frame rate of 30 fps. There are other differentiating factors between these two formats, but these are the most relevant today – on a crisp, modern display, the lower refresh rates and frame rates of a PAL game will be slightly choppy compared to the NTSC version, making the NTSC version in most cases preferable.
With the revamped PlayStation Now just beginning to roll out – the service has just gone live for subscribers in the Asian region and won’t arrive in North America until June 13, almost three weeks from now – it’s unclear whether or not that will be in each region will be the case or whether the option to play the NTSC versions of the available PS1 games will be added later. A lot can change in the next few weeks.
However, there is a precedent for this. Back when Sony jumped into the mini-console craze with the PlayStation Classic, the company also made the puzzling decision to emulate the PAL version of several games on the console – something that skeptics about the company’s investment in its back-end Catalog little deterred . The coming weeks will likely show just how keen Sony is on being nice to those interested in its retro offerings.
Polygon has reached out to Sony to confirm and will update this story pending a response.
