One of the qualms regarding Sony’s PlayStation Now when it arrived on PlayStation 3 last year was the pricing model. With prices ranging from $2.99 for a four-hour rental to $5.99 for seven days, users questioned the value of the company’s Netflix-esque streaming service right off the bat.
Thankfully, Sony took a lot of the community’s feedback on board during the prolonged Beta test, and today unveiled the pricing model for Now’s monthly subscription service ahead of its debut in North America next week. At $19.99 per month (or $44.99 for a three-month offer), budding players will gain access to over 100 PS3 games from the get-go, including titles as diverse as Ratchet and Clank and Darksiders II.
In an announcement via PlayStation Blog, the company also highlighted that Now will only be available on PS4s in North America for the time being, with plans to bring it to other platforms and indeed broaden the selection of games in the months to come.
The subscription service will be available first on PS4 across North America, and will come to other PlayStation Now enabled devices in the future.
As a service, Sony’s Gakai-powered streaming is still very much in its infancy, but today’s news is evidence that the technology is beginning to creep closer and closer to a fully-fledged release. How exactly PlayStation Now fares on the market remains to be seen — after all, this $19.99 monthly fee will have to be lumped together with the cost of a PlayStation Plus subscription — though it seems safe to assume that the service will live or die depending on the amount of software that the company adds to the digital library over time.
PlayStation Now will go live for PlayStation 4s in North America on January 13th, and Sony has advised users to ensure they have a beefy Internet connection before attempting to stream full-sized titles.
Published: Jan 5, 2015 10:09 am