PS NOW

Sony recently announced the UK launch of their streaming service, PlayStation Now. I'm not sure how successful this service has been in the US, but I can't see it getting much support over here.

$20 a month to play a limited list of PS3 games (and not even at the highest quality - 1080p is not supported). You can rent them for a smaller price, but this is clearly ridiculous. Rent a PS3 game for 9 days for $15 and then you're unable to play it after the rental period is up?! These prices will probably be converted straight into £ for the UK too, so we'll be no doubt be paying £20 a month.

I could perhaps understand paying for a streaming service that included new PS4 games as well, but this type of payment model for PS3, PS2 or PS1 games just screams rip-off.

Streaming has obviously been very successful for films, but I just don't see it working for video games. Hopefully it will fail, otherwise a future of never actually owning the games we play might well be a reality one day.

It's not the only strange decision Sony has made this month either. Gradius 5 is getting a PS3 digital release, which is great, but not a PS4 release. Disappointing.

Comments 2

honestgamer Staff May 2, 2015

I think the Gradius decision is at least partly Konami's fault. Sony is of course also to blame, and so far seems only to have set up whatever infrastructure is necessary for PS/PS2 games to arrive on Vita and PS3, but Konami could have done something more ambitious and brought Gradius V to PS4 instead, I'm sure. As for PS Now, I don't think it's doing all that well over here, for the reasons you mentioned. Why rent a game for that price when I can often buy it in mint condition online for maybe a few bucks more? There's no sense in it!

Masters Staff May 4, 2015

I've used the service to rent a game here and there for two bucks or less when I didn't want to spend the ten bucks to buy it, and I was thankful to save that eight or so dollars. Outside of that specific set of circumstances, I can't see much use for it.