A closed beta test for version 3.50, codenamed Musashi, rolls out on Wednesday, March 1. Remote Play, however, will not be part of the beta release. What gamers will get to try out are a lot of social features, including notifications for when your PS friends come online; the ability to change your status to offline; and scheduling future online gameplay sessions with friends. The new version also adds live streaming integration for video site Dailymotion.
As for Remote Play, Sony says “you can look forward to it soon.” It’s not clear if that means Remote Play will show up in a later beta version of Musashi, or if it won’t show up until the official release.
The codename Musashi is presumably in honor of the classic PlayStation series, not the historical figure—although the original game, Brave Fencer Musashi, does pay homage to Miyamoto Musashi.
Why this matters: Sony is currently leading the console wars in terms of raw numbers, but with Remote Play for PCs PlayStation is catching up to the rest of the gaming world. The Xbox One already streams games to PCs running Windows 10. Valve’s Steam for PC gamers is also big on in-home streaming. Steam first released an in-home streaming feature in 2014, and more recently released the Steam Link streaming box. Steam Link is designed to bring PC gaming to the living room without hauling your gaming rig out of the basement.
Sony has not said which versions of Windows and OS X Remote Play will support. Remote Play currently works with select Xperia smartphones and tablets and allows you to stream games to a mobile device and play them using a DualShock 4 controller.