It
was CES 2014. The PlayStation 4, Sony’s next installment in its flagship
PlayStation console series, had been released into the wild for a few months. At
its CES press conference, Sony unveiled plans about its cloud gaming service that it was bringing to consumers after its acquisition of Gaikai. PlayStation
Now (read: Netflix for video games) was pitched as an attempt to make the
entire PlayStation library playable on all of Sony’s consoles and eventually a
slew of other devices. Loads of people were excited to see what work Sony and
Gaikai could do together.
Fast forward a year. The PlayStation Now
service has made its entry into a very small market. It’s gone through a series of
transformations since its original pitch a year ago. At this point, all of the
titles that are available as a part of PS Now are titles that can be found on
PlayStation 3.
Who knows whether or not we’ll be able
to access titles from more generations as time goes on. My guess is that Sony
has started with PlayStation 3 titles because they have the easiest access to
those games because the development deals weren’t struck that long ago. This is
also seems part of an experiment to observe the success of PS3 titles with PS
Now. If the service does well enough with PS3 titles I could see Sony expanding
the service to include titles from the older catalogs.
I want to take a second to consider
where this service fits into the entire PlayStation ecosystem. Obviously this
can be seen as an answer to backwards compatibility requests that occur in each
successive console as the PS4 has no backwards compatibility to run PS3 games. So
right now the service acts as a way for people who either skipped out on PS3
games or want to revisit them to access the titles on their PS4, Vita, or PS3.
I think that the current platform can be seen as a service geared toward new
PS4 owners to give them titles to play on the PS4, which some argue doesn’t
have a lot of titles out.
A big question about PS Now I have is
about the effect it would have on other platforms if the service expands to
other titles in the PS library. If PS Now expands its catalog to offer other
kinds of games, what will happen to the PS Vita? I don’t think Sony is really
worried about it but I know that for a lot of people, along with being able to
play first-party exclusive titles, the allure of the PS Vita lay in its ability
to play PSP and PS1 titles. I can say that about my experiences with the Vita
as it gave me the ability to go back and play all the Final Fantasy games I
missed on PS1 as well as titles I never played because I never purchased a PSP, like Valkyria Chronicles 2. PS Now has the
potential to cannibalize Vita sales.
Since its official launch in January of
2015, I honestly haven’t heard very much about PlayStation Now. So what’s
holding it back from becoming more successful? I’m sure the pricing geniuses of
Sony have figured things out, but pricing remains a hard selling point for many
people. Is the service worth the price? It depends on what you purchase and how
you derive value. If you purchase a game a la carte, value could depend on
how many hours you put into the game. On the other hand, if you purchase the
plan that allows you access to a number of titles on the service, like the
Netflix subscription-based model, then value depends on the number of titles you play during the
duration of the service. You’d derive a greater value from playing more games.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to
PlayStation Now is that it doesn’t feel like it’s fully rolled out yet. Why hasn’t PlayStation fully committed to the service? Well it
could be a financial reason such as the amount of money it would take to put run
many titles from the cloud, or because there’s no way to really know just how
much money this new service could net the company. Furthermore, Sony is
offering a limited amount of titles because it’s weary of betting all of its
chips on the subscription-based model, especially since PS Now exists alongside
the current setup of the PlayStation Store which has existed since 2006. As
long as both exist simultaneously and Sony doesn’t put all its eggs into the PS
Now basket, I can’t see the new service fulfilling its potential. I think the market is
there, but it’s also hard since no attempts to offer a service of this size
with this scope has been attempted before.
PlayStation now represents Sony’s
attempt to address complaints about the lack of backwards compatibility for the
current PS4. Perhaps more importantly, Sony is attempting to embrace the current
trends of the day and future proof itself. Companies talk big about the power
of the cloud, but few companies have the capability to experiment with its
power. Sony is one of the few companies that have the power and the gusto to
explore this territory.
The world is watching. There are rumors that Microsoft is watching the success of PlayStation Now as it looks to launch its own cloud-gaming service later this year. Hopefully one day, I’ll be impressed enough to
subscribe to PlayStation Now, but for now I’ll stick to purchasing lifetime use
of my games.
