British gamers see what you’re missing: Watch a demo of Playstation Now
Today the beta version of Sony’s game streaming Playstation Now service goes live for players in North America – and whilst we British and European gamers are left out in the cold until next year, its interesting to see how the service will work.
The streaming service will enable gamers to play potentially hundreds of PS3 titles on their PS4. The way it will work is by doing all of the difficult processing in the cloud – before beaming the pictures back to your TV. Needless to say, you’ll need a fairly speedy connection if you want to play reliably.
Apparently PS Now has been integrated directly into the Playstation Store – but rather than buy titles outright, you have to rent them. Prices go from a few dollars for four hours play, to a higher price for 90 days. In the slightly weird “Sony interviewing itself” video above, the Sony spokesperson adds that Sony is looking into a subscription service, which would make it more akin to the likes of Netflix.
Cleverly too, apparently your saves will be kept in the Cloud, meaning that if you rent for a few hours and the rental expires, next time you pay up you’ll be able to pick up where you left off. Apparently network features and trophies will also continue to work in the game too.
So please join us in eagerly counting down to “Q1 2015” when the service is due to launch over here.
