PS Now Annual Subs Half-Price in Select European Countries

Really glad to see this! Hopefully they intend to push harder in near future. PS Now has so much potential!

@KleebanKliban Well the first thing they need to do is ensuring that big games that get added last for more longer (1 Year at least rather than 6 or 3 months) as not everyone have's the time to complete the games before expiration and if by the time they expire, the player have not bought the game, well progress get lost

@Arkantos2990 it's not that difficult to finish the time limited games in 3 months. The longest games have probably been either Persona 5 or Witcher 3. Even just an hour a day should be plenty of time to finish in 3 months.

Now, if the service gets better so there's multiple time-limited games you're interested in running at once, then things could get tricky for people with limited time.

This is so cheap I almost feel bad for Sony. You can't get one indie game at this price. Now imagine 500 of them plus so many AAAs. I feel like I have robbed someone. Gamepass is so much more expensive than this even when you use the gold trick.

@Arkantos2990 I agree. They have tons of room for improvement with their 1st party support.

@reek that's why they need to make the service more attractive on the modern 1st party games front. They pay what they pay for games to be on PS Now. If thet attract more subscribers it will pay off better. I personally hope to be subscribed to PS Now indefinitely in the future.

I think this article is missing the "complain that PS Now needs to come to more territories in the comments below" but i'll do it anyway 💖 Australia please Sony! I don't give a damn if I can't even stream games, just give me the download option and I'm good to go, would be subscribed indefinitely

Mine is about to end in around 10 days, so I will sure be grabbing this offer

@Bamila the offer runs until 31st October, so you'll miss out, I'm afraid.

@MrSensical
This is very much justified complaining. Sony is really lazy when it comes to making PS Now available in more countries. Here in Poland I can use Video Pass or whatever they call it, but not PS Now. And no, I refuse to set up a fake British account to use it.

@MrSensical I, too, had a temptation to jokingly fix the title to "PS Now... ...in select European countries". But then again, why do I even bother? They ditched Vita support long ago, streaming the PS3 games in transit through PS4 likely wouldn't work (nothing streamed ever does in Remote Play, apps like YouTube or Crunchyroll wouldn't even launch) and I certainly wouldn't subscribe for PS4 titles themselves - while the control scheme gamble has mostly deterred me from buying them separately either, I'm fine with what gradually lands on PS+ which I use for cloud saves and for the collected Vita items like Grand Kingdom and Zero Time Dilemma anyway.

You could've included in which European countries this promotion is valid 🙄

I hope it comes to croatia soon.

On the PS Store it's saying £50 for me still.

I also tried the web link and it just says owned.

I am in the Czech Republic with an Irish account no sign of any discount. 😟😟

@es_lion I won't. Will just sub to alternative account and then play it on main.

Also you said its only £49 a year but you have to factor in that you still need Plus if you want to play online for a game that is not included in Now or not installed from Now.

@Milktastrophe I’m sorry but 3 months is never long enough. Especially for big name games.

The first time I signed up for PS Now it was because Spider-Man. They released it in April 2020 on PS Now for just 3 months. I didn’t know that as it wasn’t made clear. So like a sucker, I saw it as one of the main games they were highlighting IN JULY and so I buy PS Now for a year. A few days later I’m about 4 hours into the game and suddenly I can’t play it anymore. That’s absolute bull and I felt duped.

On XBox Game Pass you have the games a lot longer and when they are leaving the service they tell you for a long time in advance providing you lots of warning for games you may want to complete.

Wow, did I read this wrong. I thought it said PSPlus and bought it lol. What a wally.

I'd love to see a subscription available from Sony that combines Plus and Now, so if you want the two, buying them together would be the cheaper option.

You can also use cheap psn credit to bring the cosy down further. Used shopto so total cost was £22.85, just hope my internet is good enough to stream the PS3 games

Any news or instructions on how to check which regions are applicable for this discount?

EDIT: Nevermind, forgot I already had a UK account..

Doesn't it tend to go for 25% off for Black Friday as well? It's a bit of a sting that this a 'new customer only' offer; what about those who are on the fence about renewing? This would have tipped them over into doing so in all probability, whereas if they're left paying full price then they may not see the value and leave. Money left on the table.

@reek It is, and I too have argued that PSN is far better value. The thing is that the master of marketing i.e. Sony, have just got it wrong on this one. They allow MS to take the spotlight.

PSN has twice as many games, and is half the cost when you discount all deals (£50 per year versus £132) and it had cloud gaming in addition to downloading games way ahead of Xbox - but they just lost out on the marketing.

Would make an interesting feature as to why tbh. Some would argue its day 1 first party games, but look at what MS have released under that banner, about 3 games in 3 years - you would have been better just buying them outright.

I think the truth of the matter is the £1 deal for XBGP. Given most peeps have an XBL sub anyway its a no-brainer to add just £1 to convert it to XBGP.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of members acutally pay £11.99 a month.

Are the PS3 games still the bare bones versions or do they include any DLC?

Nice! the PS App and PSN Store still say £49.99 but ordered through that web link in the article.
for £2 a month, thought why not! (just gotta remember to cancel in 364 days time xD)
So funny it's cheaper than Nintendo Switch Online now (albeit temporarily).

@sanderson72 only if it is something like a GOTY edition that included any dlc that way the rest are the basic games.

@themightyant I was still half asleep when I read it lol.
Ah well, more games to play

@InvaderJim I'm sure psnow customers are exempt from having to have psplus to play psnow games online. I could be wrong though...

@GoodGame 🙈😂. I'm sure the service will pay for itself over time with the amount of content on there.

@KayOL77 I'm sure it will

£22.85 with a shopto £25 voucher.

@Zenszulu Yep, thought that was the case. I'll just keep playing anything I want on my old trusty PS3 Slim then. Some games didn't get a GOTY edition (F1 Race Stars being one of my son's favourites) and so the DLC tracks and so on just aren't available. Seems like such a half arsed job by Sony, especially when you consider the joke PS2 titles.

@sanderson72 probably not just down to Sony but also of the original publishers are willing to make the dlc available. Saying that it has been some time since they have added too many PS3 games anyway the focus seems to be solely on PS4 games now.

@Zenszulu Which is something I just don't get. You can play PS4 titles on the PS4 and PS5 so why bother with Now? It's only value is due to the lack of backwards compatibility from the PS3 and previous gens.
Given Sony's internal know-how, I'd have thought they'd be doing something like this (https://www.psu.com/news/the-top-ps3-emulator-can-now-boot-up-every-single-ps3-game/)

@sanderson72 pretty sure PS Now runs off of modified PS3 hardware and not emulators. So it's not down to if they can get the games working but if third party publishers want to put their games on the service. Some in the past have opted for remastered versions of games for the PS4 rather than putting the game on a steaming service. The same issue is being had with something like Switch online where publishers would much rather release their older games as part of a collection than have them on their.

There is also the fact that many games have expired licences from the PS3 era even if it seems like the games don't have any some may come down to the music in the game. You would have thought that pretty much all the Sony published games would have been on their by now no matter how obscure.

@Kienda same thing will happen when you sub the day before a game added a year ago is leaving. In the PS Now app it tells you which games are time limited before you download/stream them.

This finally made me take the plunge and try out PS Now - I've never really been all that tempted before (I got my PSN store credit from instantgaming too, so managed to only pay £21 ish for the year's sub)

Probably the most revolutionary thing about it for me is that I can stream games on my PC too, through PS Now. I have a PS5 but it's the family console (I have 3 kids) so I can't play PS games while one of the kids is also doing so - well now I can! (only games that are on PS Now though, obviously)

People keep freaking out that Playstation exclusives are being ported to PC, but where is the freaking out that PC users can currently get a years worth of access to some pretty decent Playstation exclusives for £25, without even having to buy any Playstation hardware?

I mean the streaming quality obviously depends on your internet speed, but on my PC it runs pretty well

Infuriatingly, when it says you can't buy the 50% off if you have an active subscription THAT INCLUDES THE 7 DAY FREE TRIAL! Its ridiculous! I had to make a 2nd PSN to work around it because I wanted the discount. Free trials really shouldn't count as an active membership in situations like this.