Since its announcement at the start of the year, anticipation has definitely cooled on PlayStation Now. The forward thinking service still sounds exciting on paper, but with the on-demand platform not rolling out in Europe until next year, and prices being a little on the high side, a few question marks have been placed next to the service. Nevertheless, if you’re in North America, you can give it a go now, and see if those criticisms are justified.
Available in open beta on the PlayStation 4 as of yesterday, you’ll be able to rent over 100 classic PlayStation 3 titles directly from the PlayStation Store. These releases will be available in 7-day, 30-day, 90-day, and four hour durations, with the latter offering an easy means of testing out a title without coughing up too much cash. Impressively, traditional features such as Trophies, friends lists, and leaderboards will all be supported, despite the fact that you’re playing in the cloud.
You can learn a little more about how the service works courtesy of this, er, somewhat awkward PlayStation Blog infomercial. What are your initial impressions on the cloud-based platform? Try not to buffer in the comments section below.
[source blog.us.playstation.com]
Comments 21
Shame the Beta is not open to everybody. As someone based in Europe this is of no use to me
Oh my gaud! Look at those gas prices!
A little on the high side? Prices are an absolute rip off and this is the same company that had the nerve to preach about value to the customer. A really weak article that seems to be more interested in praising Sony rather than critising them for clearly ripping customers and readers off.
@voodoo341 What's weak about it? It gives all the facts and covers the criticisms that have been directed at the service thus far, and contrary to what you say there's no undue praise being given. Overly harsh, buddy.
@voodoo341 What article did you read? There is zero praise for Sony there whatsoever....and it mentions the criticisms too. This is a news article not an opinion feature so to expect them to join in on the criticisms is stupid, they are only reporting on what has happened.
My main gripe - which upon further review is probably unwarranted - was the lack of "Save" transfer. Trying out a game for 4 hours is nice - I guess that's why we rarely see demos anymore - but if I then want to buy it the "save" can't be transferred to a full game. Now obviously playing PS3 games on a PS4 this isn't an issue, but it bugged me playing on a PS3 so I stopped, even when the games were free. Disagea specifically, but Sacred Citadel as well.
@PorllM the key words being mentions the criticism. I quote ' prices a little on the high side'. That isn't criticism it's glossing over the single biggest issue for this service. Why not be as critical as the article for EA Access? A service they only reported on as well. Sony have gone from preaching about offering value to customers to showing off an over priced rental service.
@rjejr its a streaming service for ps3 games on the ps4, you can't buy them for ps4... I'm guessing it won't ever be set up to sync with ps3?
I thought the prices were OK, I'd only be interested in renting short games for a day or a week anyway, for me I think the service is really decent. The gripes about price are ludicrous, if you want to rent a game for months then you may as well buy the thing.
@SimonAdebisi Fair point. Especially the older titles where the difference between owning a used copy and renting for a few hours on Now is only a few dollars.
I was expecting a more netflix style subscription service - pay X a month to get unlimited access to X games. (Although that's basically what Plus is, come to think of it).
I was playing killzone 3 on ps now and it was almost completely unplayable. I could feel the latency when aiming. I have a 20mbps connection and it said on the connection test that I could play yet I felt so much latency. I hope this gets better not only with price but also quality or else this will be doa.
@voodoo341 So Sammy must come to the dark side?
@voodoo341 Cant you read between the lines and see the usual light hearted style in Sammys articles.. also .. have a cookie
Does anyone have a link to where I can sign up for PSNow?
Not a bad start to the PS Now service in my opinion. Now if Sony can build on it from here then it might not be a bad option at all to have in the future.
Speaking of options though, in the EA Access article a couple of days ago Sammy was dismissing EA's early access in the comments as being nothing but "premium demos" but to be fair to EA their option compares well price-wise with the PS Now 4-hour option. Let's have some balance here Sammy because as things stand at the moment the price of that 4-hour option makes it very much like one of your EA "premium demos" that you were poo-pooing. If you must insist on belittling the early access portion of EA's subscription service then please don't sound so upbeat when you say, "with the latter offering an easy means of testing out a title without coughing up too much cash". Balance is a virtue.
I may look into this once they announce some sort of subscription service for it. I'd still rather play a game locally.
It should be interesting to see how well it actually works for people. It'll also probably work better for some games than others. Anyway, the cloud sounded like a cool, futuristic idea, but we'll have to see if the technology is actually there to pull it off spotlessly. It will also be interesting to see if people actually cough up the dough under this current, less than ideal, pricing model.
The time is NOW.
The price is OW!
The prices are to low
@voodoo341 you seriously need a chill pill. And an xbone
Here's my thoughts on the price issue.
Yes they are a bit steep some of those games you can buy used at Gamestop or wherever for alot cheaper the one I noticed was Dues Ex for 90 days they wanted $29.99 for it.
However what if you are someone like me who doesn't own a PS3? In order for me to play Dues Ex I would need to first buy a system then the game which if I were to do that would cost me well over $100. I think that is who they are aiming at is people who dont have the system, which would make sense.
Still I wish they would have a monthly subscription plan like Netflix.
Why does anyone read or respond to the voodoo guy anyway? The guy hates sony(he himself stated so) and so he always tries to find anything negative on every article.
Not that I disagree with him on the ps now prices and he is entitled to his opinion, but it's hard to take anyone seriously when all they do is bring negativity into every conversation.
This is going to be really nice, when it comes to Europe. (:
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