PlayStation Now Will Be Exclusive To PS4 And Windows Later This Year (Updated)
(Update, 2/16/2017 11:40 p.m. PST: It seems like Sony is cleaning house. The company also announced that PlayStation Video will drop support for "some televisions, Blu-ray Disc players, and audio video products" on April 12. The full list of affected products can be found on the company's website.)
PlayStation Now, a service that allows people to stream PlayStation 3 games, will soon be exclusive to the PlayStation 4 and to Windows computers.
The service is currently available on various TVs, the PS3, the PlayStation Vita, and select Blu-ray players. PlayStation Now made sense for people who missed some PS3 titles or want to relive the console's glory days. It's kind of like a game-centric Netflix: Customers pay a regular fee to access 450-plus games, more than 100 of which are PlayStation exclusives, on compatible devices. That's easier than buying a PS3 and 450 or so games to go with it.
That will change on August 15. Sony announced in a blog post that PlayStation Now will drop support for the following devices:
- PlayStation 3
- PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV
- All 2013, 2014, 2015 Sony Bravia TV models
- All Sony Blu-ray player models
- All Samsung TV models
The only devices left are the PS4 and Windows PCs. Sony explained that shrinking PlayStation Now came after some soul searching:
After thoughtful consideration, we decided to shift our focus and resources to PS4 and Windows PC to further develop and improve the user experience on these two devices. This move puts us in the best position to grow the service even further. If you use any of the above devices, we want to give our heartfelt thanks for your support, and we hope you’ll continue with us. Remember that all of your PS Now cloud game saves can easily be accessed on both PS4 and Windows PC.
Windows support for PlayStation Now--and a $30 adapter that allows PC gamers to use Sony's DualShock 4 controller without a wired connection--arrived in August 2016. The service landed on other devices in May 2015. Thus, it didn't take all that long for Sony to decide that supporting a technological grab bag of devices made less sense than focusing on its current gen console and the world's most popular consumer operating system.
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The company advised PlayStation Now subscribers upset about this change to cancel their accounts. PlayStation Now is available in two flavors, a $20 monthly subscription and a $45 quarterly option. Anyone who chose the quarterly option has to be careful to cancel their subscription well before the August 15 cutoff; otherwise, they could end up paying for a couple months of access to a service that no longer supports any of their devices.
Not that it's going to take long for Sony to push PlayStation Now subscribers towards the PS4 and Windows: The service's website lists only PS4 and Windows support on both its landing page and the Devices page. It will be interesting to see how the service fares now that Steam natively supports the DualShock 4. (Some people don't want to play console-first games with a mouse and keyboard.) Many of the games are sure to be available on PC.
Will exclusives be enough to get people to pay $20 a month (or $45 quarterly) to stream games? Sony will find out later this year.
Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
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WildCard999 It seems worth it for the playstation exclusives that are available.Reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_Now_games
I hope there's local support on the PC that allows for multiple controllers. -
bloodroses My guess is that the Playstation Vita and TV are dead? If not, this will definitely help put a nail into those coffins.Reply -
jasonkaler That sounded really messed up.Reply
I first read it: Playstation, now will be exclusive to...
I always thought "exclusive" meant singular. -
cryoburner This is the same company that bought up the OnLive game streaming service a couple years back just to announce they would be shutting it down at the end of that month. Sony bought OnLive just for their patents, and to get rid of a potential competitor, and anyone with games on the platform lost access to them.Reply -
problematiq Reply19304708 said:That sounded really messed up.
I first read it: Playstation, now will be exclusive to...
I always thought "exclusive" meant singular.
I read this as Playstation will now be exclusive to PS4 and windows. what?
After looking at the article I now see it is "Playstation Now" will be exclusively for PS4 and Windows later this year. -
IndignantSkeptic This service is utterly stupid; it was meant for people to be able to play on superior hardware via inferior hardware, but they have got it completely backwards because it only lets people play on inferior hardware via superior hardware. In that case, it would be smarter to just recompile and play natively. Serious waste of internet bandwidth!Reply -
Kunra Zether I tried PS now out on my ps4 when they had a free trial. It ran surprisingly smooth. I didn't keep it even though I had a Xbox 360 last gen. And I haven't played some of the ps3 exclusives. The reason being is that the best ones are getting remasters, and I can't see my self paying that much to play older games that I can get for $5 or less at the local flea market. I got my son an Xbox one and I have to say that I am happy the I chose the ps4 at launch because to me it is a smother and easier device to navigate on. The Xbox one makes me feel old (28) because I get confused trying to navigate the UI that's just me though. But decisions like this and the mid gen consoles help to make me feel happy with me deciding to go back to gaming on the PC.Reply -
Druidsmark Sony stop up dating the ps3 blue ray firmware a long time ago, which is why I had to go out and by a new blue ray player last year. I found the ps3 was unable to play some of the newest blue ray movies on the market.Reply
Tried Psnow last year for the free 7 day trial, Sony's games ran great but some third party titles like Dead Island Riptide ran terribly on the service. As Dead Island Riptide on Psnow had such an unstable frame rate I just went out and bought the game on disc, so my experience left me being aware that not all games offered run well on the service even if you have a good internet speed. On top of that most of the games available during the free 7 day trial I all ready owned making the service useless to me.