Okay so before I got my PS4, my buddy kept telling me how great it was. He said that you could get all new PS4 games and I'd have a great time. I was like "But what if I want to buy a PS3 game and play it? Can I do that?" He says "no, you can't play the disc, because it doesn't have an emulator reader. But you can DL PS3 games from the store and play them on your playstation 4."

Well, I bought a PS4, but after a month I cannot figure how to DL PS3 games onto my PS4 and play them. This eludes me. How do you do it?? Is there some secret menu on PSN that I'm not seeing??

I really really want Final Fantasy X-2 remake and Red Dead Redemption.

You can only stream games through PlayStation Now. The PS3 library is still in its infancy, so only a fraction of the games are available right now. This will grow over time though and Sony expects all the heavy hitters to eventually be available.

There's also different pricing models depending on how long you want to rent that game for. I've seen options ranging anywhere from 4 hours to 90 days.

You can access PlayStation Now through the PlayStation Store.

Sorry, but you can't, your friend was wrong.

There is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Now though, in which you can rent and stream some PS3 games, but they heavily rely on your internet connection.

Considering the history Sony have with the Playstation Store that is still missing a lot of PS1/PS2/PSP games, I don't really think the selection of games on Playstation Now will get that much better either.

Rent...? What? Seriously? What if I rent a game, get halfway through, my "service" is up, and I rent it again, does my save file stay there or do I have to start over?

Here is the current list of games http://m.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/List_of_PlayStation_Now_Games

The pricing model ranges from $2.99 to $29.99 from 4 hour rentals to 90 day rentals.

Sounds like your friend didn't know what he was talking about. The PS4 is not backwards compatible with PS3 games, whether they are physical or digital. You can play a small number of PS3 games by streaming them, but those are just a limited rental.

Is there like, any actual reason that is based on logic that made Sony decide we shouldn't be able to buy and purchase digital versions of PS3 games..?

You keep your save files, so you can always rent the game again and continue from where you left off.

Because then they'd have to include PS3 hardware in the PS4 (like how early PS3s had PS2 hardware in them), since the PS3 uses a totally different architecture than the PS4. Needless to say, adding extra processors would drive up the price.

And the console would be bigger and run hotter as well.

There's an easy way around that, though. The streaming service is fine, just make it so you pay once and you're done. Want to boot up and stream a PS3 game? Well, you bought it, so you can do that..? I don't get the whole "Rental" thing.

Anyway, sadly it looks like I'm better off just buying a cheap PS3. I have a PS2, which plays PSX and PS2 games, and then I have a PS4 for PS4 games. All that's left is to buy a PS3 I guess. Sigh.

Yeah I'm not sure why you can only rent them. Hopefully they'll add an option to buy eventually.

Yeah, there are technical reasons behind it. The PS3 and PS4 hardware are extremely different and incompatible with eachother. The PS3 CPU and PS4 CPU have completely different instruction sets and thus speak different languages. So it's not something Sony decided on a whim to be mean or anything, they did it because they had to. Well, they could make a larger PS4 with a PS3 inside it, but that would obviously raise the price quite a bit

I imagine it's to cover the server costs. Every time you play one of those games it costs them bandwidth to stream the video from their servers to your PS4, so they'd lose money if you only had to pay once but play the game a lot.

That would be the best option. Even if PS Now had more games, and let you buy them permanently, I don't think streaming is really an ideal way to play.

Yeah it's weird how many classics are missing especially JRPG classics from the PS2 era.

I may be speaking for myself, but I don't see a reason they couldn't make a separate version of PS4 that had backwards compatibility but simply sell it for a higher price.. giving people the choice to pay extra for more functionality, like when buying a new PC you could buy an average priced decent machine or spend the extra on a PC with a few more components already installed for a few hundred bucks more...

perhaps that is just wishful thinking though.. but the early PS3s were backwards compatible even if the newer ones aren't (and if you look at an unopened Backwards Compatible PS3 on online Auction sites they sell for much more than any of the eighth gen consoles do atm), so its not an impossible situation..

or JRPGs at all.. which is weird considering the Playstation consoles have always been known for having more JRPGs than the competitors

I never did like the PS4 frankly I always enjoyed the PS3 and I might get one by the end of the year or my birthday.

An add-on would be more feasible than a separate version, but either way I think it's mostly about the money. They can make more money by selling you rentals and enhanced ports than they can by selling a backwards compatible system.

So by Streaming games, you can only play them Online Only?

Now it seems they only want you to play your games ONLINE instead of having offline access.

Well, in the case of streaming services, it's not a case of trying to force people to play offline games online. It's more a way of getting around hardware limitations.... streaming was originally a PC idea, someone had the thought to have a server farm of uber game systems so that any shmoe with a $400 computer could stream Crysis (or whatever) on their crappy box without needing to buy an uber game machine. With the PSNow thing, it's supposed to be a way that you can play games regardless of the hardware it needs - the PS4 isn't backwards compatible, but it can still stream a PS3 game because the code isn't running on the PS4, it's running back at the server farm.

Of course, streaming has the issue of lag/latency - if your broadband isn't amazingly awesome, or the game you're playing is too split-second-twitch, the control latency (sending your commands to their sever, they send the results back) will svck. You also need enough bandwidth to get 1080p/30-60fps without buffering, too.

This one would be nice: http://www.consolecolors.com/images/ps3ssmgr.jpg

yeah, maybe an add-on would be more feasible... and I understan d your point, but Backwards compatibility can be a huge selling point in its own right (like I said, a boxed Backwards compatible PS3 sells for a small fortune these days)

Cool...good thing I get paid next week.

Well, it was only a suggestion, but unfortunately that's a Japan model. Sorry...

BUT, you could buy some nice faceplate decal skins !!!

Example: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-PlayStation-Super-Slim-Skin-3/dp/B00FPU3VRY/ref=pd_sim_sbs_vg_8?ie=UTF8&refRID=155APN8D0Z1F4TP6TF7P

It was still a cool looking console----I'm still thinking about putting a PS3 in layaway...we'll see.