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PlayStation Now, Sony's 'Netflix For Games' -- Pros and Cons

Posted by Soulskill on from the stream-all-the-things dept.

An anonymous reader writes: When Sony acquired nascent cloud gaming service Gaikai, it was obvious they were interested in bringing streamed gaming to the PlayStation. The service is in the process of coming online, in a beta test that started this week. The idea is simple, and one that game companies are excited about — but it's also complex and expensive, creating a new problem for each one it solves. The biggest difficulty you'd expect — latency — actually seems to hold up pretty well. It'll even hold its own when fighting for bandwidth with Netflix and other video streams.

But the expense of using the service is excessive. "To rent Darksiders, a game that's been practically given away to PC owners thanks to Humble Bundle and the collapse of publisher THQ, you can pay $14.99 for 90 days, $7.99 for 30 days, $5.99 for 5 days or — no joke — $4.99 for four hours. ... Final Fantasy 13-2 costs $29.99 for 90 days. A used copy of the same costs $20 at GameStop." In addition, the pricing options are unusual and unpredictable. Users can't simply pay a flat monthly fee for service. "Variable pricing is in place because Sony gave the publishers and developers free reign to set their own prices, which results in wildly disparate costs for different games and different periods of rental time. It's not even mandatory that you have to have all four categories of rental time. I went to check out Saints Row 3 and found that it only had the four hour and 90 day options."

5 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. sega channel by ganjadude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anyone else remember sega channel for sega genesis? i think 11.99 got me unlimited games on it for the month (granted i only recall 5-8 games on it at a time, and they would rotate every month) Seems like a much better price structure to me. 9.99 a month to play whatever limited rotating catalog is there, i think a number of gamers would pay for that, but with the prices the way they are talking it will fail (after it makes moms and dads angry at their kids for their 200 a month gaming bill)

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  2. I'd hardly call this "Netflix for games" by msobkow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Were it "Netflix for games" you'd pay a flat monthly fee and be able to play whatever game(s) you want.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  3. Re:Sony can pack it in by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 3, Funny

    PROS:
    Lets you live forever
    Gives great blow jobs
    Makes you wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice

    CONS:
    Sony

    Looks like the CONS trump all the PROS.

  4. PS4 has been disappointing in this regard .... by King_TJ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is just the latest blast of greed from Sony with this console.
    I purchased a PS4 just a week or two ago, after holding out this long with our aging PS3 system -- under the assumption it would be a worth successor. In a few ways, it is. Certainly, the new DualShock controllers are one of the highlights. They're more comfortable to hold, have the ability to plug in headphones and route the game audio through them, have the touch-pad in the middle, different colored lights indicating player 1, 2, 3, etc. Good stuff. But then I discovered you couldn't even download your MP3 music to the PS4 from a memory stick to play it! The only way it seems to allow music playing is via a subscription service! Then you have to pay for the PSNetwork, or else you're pretty much locked out of playing games online. (That was always a reason I preferred PS3 to X-Box in the past... Don't like to pay subscription fees just for the privilege of online play of games I just paid $60 a pop for!)

    I'm *almost* surprised Sony didn't tell me that like my satellite TV box, I'm simply renting it from them and must return it when my subscription with them expires!

    1. Re:PS4 has been disappointing in this regard .... by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What did you expect? The old Sony is back - after taking a beating by both the Wii and Xbox360 last generation, they were humbled.

      So they produced this piece of hardware called the PS4. They saw the Xbox One and how Microsoft fumbled it (again, Microsoft got greedy because they saw the success of the Xbox360). They see the PS4 outselling the Xbox One by miles and think they own it all.

      The lessons were that no, the Xbox One isn't out - think of it as the PS3 of the last generation (the PS3 was a joke until a couple of years in and a few price drops later). In fact, the Xbox One sales are probably like the PS3 was back then. Both can end up quite successful (the PS3 was quite a good system in the end).

      Even better, we NEED both. If anything, to keep both Microsoft AND Sony honest. And they are - features announced on one are added to the other, so competition is keeping both in check.

      Heck, PS+ and Xbox Live - the free games keep getting better because Microsoft started offering two games a month, then Sony, and so on. Blu-Ray 3D was next (Microsoft announced it for the August update, PS4 got it the week after that). Media playback is probably coming next.

      There's no doubt, though, both consoles are INCREDIBLY immature at launch - they both needed a year - even now both are way better than they were at launch.