PlayStation Now - Where does it fit in?

            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.