[dropcap]R[/dropcap]emember when Sony had their conference on the Playstation 4, showcasing all the unique and fun features the console was going to offer gamers?
I remember the excitement of that conference and knowing that my next generation console of choice would be the Playstation 4. One of these features was teased that we would be getting a form of backwards compatibility in the form of streamed games. Think Netflix but for your Playstation games. The application was titled Playstation Now.
Since October we have seen a beta of this app in progress, giving us a taste of what was to come, and the response was less than positive. The way they seemed to be going about letting you stream games was from as little to a certain number of hours, to days, to weeks, to a month. However that was per game.
Some games had very high rental prices that didn’t make much sense and a demand for a monthly subscription was talked about by gamers. It would make more sense to pay a flat rate per month and stream the entire library. Now, no pun intended, you will be able to.
On January 13, Playstation Now will launch first on Playstation 4 and then later on for the remaining systems. For a fee of $19.99 a month — or a three month subscription of $44.99 — you will have access to the entire Playstation Now library. Sony will also be offering a seven day free trial of the service.
For the gamers that like to have physical copies of the games and collect, this service may not interest them. But, for those that really don’t mind having it digitally streamed or downloaded from Sony’s cloud service, this could be a more affordable route than purchasing all the games outright.
Right now the trailer boasts over 100+ Playstation 3 titles. Here’s hoping that they start to throw some Playstation 2 classics in there.
What’s your opinion? Would you want to play games this way and is this the best alternative to backwards compatibility? Let us know in the comments below.
