Sony Officially Reveals PlayStation Now Cloud Gaming Service

playstation-now-headerThe cloud gaming service formerly called Gaikai and informally referred to by gaming news writers as PlayStation Cloud was officially announced by Sony at CES. The service is now called PlayStation Now and is going to be available on just about every device that you can imagine.

The PlayStation Now service is planned to be available to users on the PlayStation 4 as previously reported and the PlayStation Vita as Sony had previously hinted at. What was news from this announcement was that Sony is also extending the Now service to the PlayStation 3, smartphones, tablets and Sony Bravia TVs.

The other thing people are going to be interested in is pricing. Sony hasn’t disclosed prices but have said that the games on PlayStation Now will be available for rent or through a subscription plan. There’s no word whether there will be any benefits granted to PS Plus users or people who already own game through the PlayStation Store or physical copies.

Interestingly, Sony already has PlayStation Now working for demonstration at CES. While assembled members of the press noticed some input lag and some minor graphic detail issues, the issues didn’t really affect the quality of gameplay and it seems as though PS Now works.

Despite not having the proper setup for controllers, Sony has already worked on solutions for platforms other than the PS3 and PS4. On TVs, you can tether a PlayStation controller with a USB cord before using the Bluetooth wireless connectivity. For the Vita, the back touchpad will function as a replacement for the missing trigger buttons and L3 and R3 buttons.

And Sony hasn’t disclosed which games will be available on PS Now at launch. The demoed games were The Last of Us, God of War: Ascension, Puppeteer and Beyond: Two Souls. It makes sense that Sony would demo a group of PS3 first-party exclusives. How many third-party publishers and multiplatform games will immediately end up on Now remains to be seen.

Roll-out of PlayStation Now will start with America starting with a closed beta rolling out in January on the PlayStation 3. The PS3 will also get the full roll-out of PS Now when it rolls out in the summer along with the PlayStation 4. PS Vita users will get PS Now afterwards. Sony tablets and Bravia TVs will be the third wave of PS Now users with other TV and mobile devices users coming last.

For now, European readers, you’re out of luck. Sony says that the number of ISPs and varying internet speeds in Europe means they’ll need more time to ensure a smooth roll-out of PS Now into the European market.

Sources: The Verge, Polygon

Advertisement

About Steve Murray

Steve is the founder and editor of The Lowdown Blog and et geekera. On The Lowdown Blog, he often writes about motorsports, hockey, politics and pop culture. Over on et geekera, Steve writes about geek interests and lifestyle. Steve is on Twitter at @TheSteveMurray.

Posted on January 9, 2014, in Games and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.

Leave a Comment

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: