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Report: Sony overhauling PlayStation Plus with new tiers and streaming

It is gonna be XBL vs PSN all over again, where people were arguing in the beginning that online play is not needed for consoles (and digital store fronts for that matter just like right now with subscription services), then when Sony introduced PSN people jumped at it claiming that it is already better than XBL (it wasn't).

Have ever Sony lived its sky high expectations? Sony supposed to introduce smart delivery (they did not), now they will for sure introduce incredible BC for PS1-PS3 titles (they probably won't).

With new Game Pass competitor, I expect XBL vs PSN situation again. Game Pass tiering aside, the offering itself is very solid
  • Stream or download games (eventually all of the game will have both
  • Old releases and day 1 releases from first and third parties (with integrated stuff like EA Play in the subscription)
  • Enhanced BC games from older generation that you can stream or download
  • Streaming available to different platforms (Xbox One generation of consoles, mobile phones and TVs in the future)
  • Play anywhere features that allow to play the games on various platforms (XCloud, Xbox, PC)
  • Access to the best version of the game for your platform via Smart Delivery
  • Touch input for various XCloud games
  • Additional streaming perks like EA Play
  • Full browser support allowing even using other services
So if drawing parallels with PSN, the new offering from Sony will be similar but worse (hello refund policy lol)
  • Disjointed PS+ and PS Now offerings where you will have some native games as PS+ while streaming will have worse version and so on
  • Day 1 first party won't be at launch, but like EA Play will come at later date, day 1 third parties are gonna be limited to small indies only but they will give some older games as gifts or something
  • Basic BC that is streaming only, no enhancements for BC titles
  • New PS Now app for PS5 only, without support of PS4 era app, might come to TVs too and mobile phones (50/50)
  • No play anywhere as Sony won't make its own PC launcher, will stick to Steam and EGS (if EGS will survive lol) releases
  • No smart delivery
  • No touch controls
  • No addiitonal streaming perks
  • No browser support
Of course even Game Pass offering is not perfect as not all games are available on XCloud, not all games are play anywhere or support smart delivery but it is what it is.

I do wonder if Sony will try throwing in some movies, music and anime creating some PS One or something solution in the long run though. But Sony Pictures don't produce enough output, Sony Music is doing whatever and in anime they should merge Crunchyroll into Funimation first (knowing Sony they will make worse Funimation app into the main app of anime, rather than using superior Cruncyroll app). I do expect them putting day 1 releases in a long run. Just like with PSN vs XBL it is gonna be a solid eventually (it took Sony 2.5 generations for that). By that time I believe Xbox will remove Gold, will introduce the ability to stream the games you bought, will introduce additional streaming services into Game Pass subscription and who knows what else. So just like right now, the ecosystem of Xbox will be much more superior while PS ecosystem is gonna be solid but kinda limited.
 
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On Demand

Banned
Fanbots acting like PSnow hasn’t been around since 2014

RcJKIlU_d.jpg


All this is doing is merging PSnow with PSplus and adding PS1PS2PSP games.

Sony’s doing their own path as usual.
 
Yes, but unlike with Retroarch when done by Sony or a game publisher, it means they must pay someone decide which games they put there or to approve them, someone else to design the trophies, someone to implement them, and after that to test it, to certificate it and to get the different age ratings for different countries and markets, to pay their legal team to see what licenses have to pay to publish the game on a new platform and to pay licenses to whoever they have to pay for releasing games in a new system.

Good points, but this is where the method of emulation is the limiting factor, clearly. Honestly, nothing stops Sony (or Microsoft, for that matter) from making just a emulator of prior consoles that can run on their new hardware; that would basically give way for users to insert discs, write them to internal storage, and play the game from there. It bypasses the licensing issue but assumes that the end user will provide the content themselves, from a legal physical disc of the game, and the system just copies the game data to storage and the emulator can run the game from there.

Otherwise, while they would still need to do the steps you mention WRT licensing, it provides a way of supporting the full library when it comes to games that aren't worth the re-licensing costs. And taking another cue from the emulator scene, nothing really stops Sony from letting players, for example, making their own trophies and sharing them in a compiled list for the community, because you can already do this with several emulators on PC and using certain websites to track trophies/achievements progress. These could be amalgamated into curated trophy lists that other people playing the game can sync access to when online to register the trophies as they're unlocked (basically like how it works for modern games).

A lot of the problems you list start to solve themselves when you open up the feature to the community; make a pure system emulator to run any games that might get officially licensed and re-sold/streamed digitally on the marketplace, while also providing a way for players to still play games that end up not getting re-licensed. Open up trophy support so that the community can create trophies for games that can then be shared with friends in non-curated formats and compiled into more official curated lists available to everyone.
We also know it's possible to introduce trophies on emulated games because Sony patented it and inplemented it in games like Locoroco Remastered, Parappa Remastered, Patapon Remastered, etc.

Well that's good, because it should make adding trophies that much easier.

Offtopic P.S.: I'm working on my own custom Retroarch overlays and shaders for my custom arcade cabinet, see GB, GBA, GBC, Lynx and Lynx in tate mode as examples. Older versions for 16:9: arcade (Versus City cabnet), WS, WS tate, WSC, WSC tate, NGP, NGPC, GG, Watara Supervision. I also overclocked the USB polling rate in the cabinet's of my controllers to 1000Hz and use Retroarch's anticipative input lag reduction setting the number of frames per game (I think it would be great if Retroarch would add the number of frames for each game to their database), and use Gsync+a proper GPU driver settings to get the best possible experience.

That's pretty neat; I haven't gone into building a cabinet but it might be something to do in the future. For now I'm just going to find some overlays, shaders etc. that look and feel best for what systems I use it for. 2D and early 3D retro games in particular really benefit from the softening and natural subtle blending of CRT displays.

Number of frames as in the game framerate? Or a display of the actual framerate on your device while playing? They probably don't do the former because majority of games fall in fixed categories of 60, 59, 30. Techniques we have now like DRS didn't exist for most older games though so it would maybe be nice to know of potential slowdown areas in certain games. OTOH, through emulator and good enough PCs playing those games now you probably don't have most or any of those frame drops.

It would be helpful to have a frame counter active in RetroArch; there's a windowed mode IIRC that provides more detail when playing but I might be confusing that with pcsx2.

I assume that considering their whole userbase, if they do a great job with the emulator, shaders, trophies and so on they could increase the interest from very low to low. But I think the most effective way to increase interest would be to add a ton of great games independently of the quality of the emulation and experience.

But the issue is Sony (and if talking platform holders in general, Microsoft & Nintendo as well) can do both. It doesn't - and shouldn't - be a case of one or the other. The former automatically ensues the latter while the latter ensures a spotlight on specific games that can help give the feature and other games supported by it a boost in interest.

For sure, obviously it would be better to offer native local emulation in PS4 and PS5 with trophies, great emulation, shaders and so on. But also requires more work, paperwork and costs than maybe to add the PS1 and PSP they had released for PS3 to their list of PS Now streaming only games. Something that would offer an additional revenue and usage source for their PS3 PS Now servers. This wouldn't be as good as the best option, but pretty likely makes more sense for them business wise since the ones who would appreciate and care about the improvements of the best experience.

It would be a decent place to start, but if that were to be the totality of their efforts WRT PS1/2/3/PSP/Vita emulation in this service revamp, then it's going to feel like something of an empty gesture because, as seen with Microsoft lately, you eventually hit a hard ceiling with the re-licensing. Even if in Sony's case they end up re-licensing a lot more games due to the sheer size of their system libraries by comparison, it's still only going to cover a fraction of the total games available.

This could be the generation for platform holders to take game preservation seriously, we'll see if any of them step up to the plate. Microsoft's done a pretty good job so far but could do more; if Sony make the push to do more then that may motivate Microsoft to do more, and so on and so forth. Maybe even Nintendo finally starts to do something real with emulation.

I wonder how many people are gonna be upset when Jim and Phil hit the Game Awards stage to announce that GPU and Spartacus will be available on competing consoles via cloud streaming subscriptions? Xbox games on Playstation and Playstation games on Xbox. The world is about to UNITE!

It'd probably crash Twitter for a weekend before any unification started 🤣

If it doesn't include first party games day 1 or reasonably thereafter, I am not interested.

Hopefully it does; there's a way for them to do this that would fit their business strategy actually, it just comes down to if

What will blow this wide open is if they have Spartacus for PC. I would LOSE MY SHIT.

PS+ style free monthly game perks would be cool.
 
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leo-j

Member
Fanbots acting like PSnow hasn’t been around since 2014

RcJKIlU_d.jpg


All this is doing is merging PSnow with PSplus and adding PS1PS2PSP games.

Sony’s doing their own path as usual.
Yea the thing is sony’s promo of ps now has been pretty inferior compared to gamepass. They pushed it s little there with the revamped pricing and introduction to downloads and $1 sub, but that was temporary. They have gone back to trickles of content a month.
 

On Demand

Banned
Yea the thing is sony’s promo of ps now has been pretty inferior compared to gamepass. They pushed it s little there with the revamped pricing and introduction to downloads and $1 sub, but that was temporary. They have gone back to trickles of content a month.

Fortunately and unfortunately PSnow is not Sony’s main focus.

Next year with the combining of PSplus they’ll probably be more marketing and promotions done.
 
Valid points, but I just don’t think day one new releases for most games on Sony’s service at this point is realistic because of the insane cost of most AAA games. Sony can convince developers to release their games day one and pay an exorbitant price to do so, but pragmatically speaking how much money will the developers earn in the long run and what will Sony have to spend in order to do so?

Games like Back4Blood, MLB or Outriders being day one aren’t common and for good reason. Scarlet Nexus to my knowledge didn’t sell well on XBOX, so it became a good candidate for Gamepass which is usually the case for most other games that don’t perform so well. Sony first party games generally sell in the millions easily. Putting them on a day one subscription service imo will severely damage their sales. Same applies to most third party games. We are already seeing how it affects XBOX software sales which was already questionable in the first place.

If Sony ever does day one first party games, a sacrifice will have to be made either in production costs and possibly even game quality. There’s a reason why games like Halo Infinite as well as others are rumored to be going into a GAAS direction and the subscription model is most likely why. Consumers purchasing games will most likely be much more profitable for Sony and developers over cheaper subscriptions models that will require millions upon millions of active subscribers to make a profit or to break even. We’ll see what Sony has planned though.
I just mentioned 3 AAA games that came day one. Then you have games that came very close to their initial release date (Dirt5, Yakuza 7, Scarlet nexus e,t,c). I mean it is not like there were tons of XSX/PS5 games released this year. Forza horizon 5 sold over 2 million in early access, the game is selling like hot cakes on steam and is still day one on gamepass. Halo infinite campaign is already top-10 at the steam charts. I doubt that games like starfiled, elder scrolls, avowed, fable, perfect dark, Hellblade 2 and more will be GAAS.

I don’t care about Sony’s sacrifices, if they want my subscription money they will have to present a compelling case for their service. If not, I will be buying the few ps5 exclusives that I want, always at a sale, and be done.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Honestly, nothing stops Sony (or Microsoft, for that matter) from making just a emulator of prior consoles that can run on their new hardware; that would basically give way for users to insert discs, write them to internal storage, and play the game from there. It bypasses the licensing issue but assumes that the end user will provide the content themselves, from a legal physical disc of the game, and the system just copies the game data to storage and the emulator can run the game from there.

I've been hoping for a long time that MS would develop something like this. Where results weren't guaranteed, but they just make the best emulator they can available. Seems like they would finally have processor speed to give a pure emulation solution a go for the 360 gen.

That is basically what they did with 360, the OG Xbox emulator on that ran almost all games perfectly if you hacked the list of supported titles. Maybe some day.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
So after a year PS Now still has the double of the content? That's what i'm reading from your post.

Total library doesn't need to be that huge at any particular minute. What GP does well is keep content fresh.

If you had a total of the number of titles that have cycled through both of these programs since inception, you'd probably be surprised.
 
It does, if you’re ok with half of it being 720p streaming only and less than 10% of the games being released in the last three years.

Then yeah it has double the content.

The biggest issue with PS Now is that it's barely in any country. I think it's not even available in 20 countries. It's like we got to 2018 and they just gave up.
 

kyliethicc

Member
Sony isn't getting rid of PS Now, they are expanding it and merging it with PS Plus. This new service will have 3 tiers:
-Tier 1: PS Plus
-Tier 2: Sony's base Game Pass + not sure if include PS Plus too
-Tier 3: PS Plus + PS Now + new stuff (PS1, PSP, PS5 games, extended demos)


It tier 3, the PS Now one, will continue having its streaming part being playable in PC and PS consoles. In fact they are working to expand it to smartphones, tablets and smart tvs.


According to the developer of the RPCS3 emulator and a Sony's internal engine team programmer (plus programmer in PS3 Insomniac games) PS5 can't properly emulate SPE/SPUs, would need additional hardware to do emulate properly the games take full advantage of the PS3 hardware. The reason is that even if modern hardware can rival in peak performance still can't match PS3's SPU sustained perfomance, and don't have enough registers. A good portion of the PS3 catalog, which doesn't take full advantage of this hardware, can be emulated properly, specially in the newer Intel (not AMD/RDNA) hardware.
Now as a standalone service and brand is going away.
 

Fox Mulder

Member
will be interesting depending on price, but MS putting their brand new top AAA releases on Gamepass is huge and almost insane. Like I’m playing Forza Horizon 5 on GP instead of spending $70.

Streaming ps3 on PSNow has been good enough for me, but not for everyone.
 

12Dannu123

Member
It is gonna be XBL vs PSN all over again, where people were arguing in the beginning that online play is not needed for consoles (and digital store fronts for that matter just like right now with subscription services), then when Sony introduced PSN people jumped at it claiming that it is already better than XBL (it wasn't).

Have ever Sony lived its sky high expectations? Sony supposed to introduce smart delivery (they did not), now they will for sure introduce incredible BC for PS1-PS3 titles (they probably won't).

With new Game Pass competitor, I expect XBL vs PSN situation again. Game Pass tiering aside, the offering itself is very solid
  • Stream or download games (eventually all of the game will have both
  • Old releases and day 1 releases from first and third parties (with integrated stuff like EA Play in the subscription)
  • Enhanced BC games from older generation that you can stream or download
  • Streaming available to different platforms (Xbox One generation of consoles, mobile phones and TVs in the future)
  • Play anywhere features that allow to play the games on various platforms (XCloud, Xbox, PC)
  • Access to the best version of the game for your platform via Smart Delivery
  • Touch input for various XCloud games
  • Additional streaming perks like EA Play
  • Full browser support allowing even using other services
So if drawing parallels with PSN, the new offering from Sony will be similar but worse (hello refund policy lol)
  • Disjointed PS+ and PS Now offerings where you will have some native games as PS+ while streaming will have worse version and so on
  • Day 1 first party won't be at launch, but like EA Play will come at later date, day 1 third parties are gonna be limited to small indies only but they will give some older games as gifts or something
  • Basic BC that is streaming only, no enhancements for BC titles
  • New PS Now app for PS5 only, without support of PS4 era app, might come to TVs too and mobile phones (50/50)
  • No play anywhere as Sony won't make its own PC launcher, will stick to Steam and EGS (if EGS will survive lol) releases
  • No smart delivery
  • No touch controls
  • No addiitonal streaming perks
  • No browser support
Of course even Game Pass offering is not perfect as not all games are available on XCloud, not all games are play anywhere or support smart delivery but it is what it is.

I do wonder if Sony will try throwing in some movies, music and anime creating some PS One or something solution in the long run though. But Sony Pictures don't produce enough output, Sony Music is doing whatever and in anime they should merge Crunchyroll into Funimation first (knowing Sony they will make worse Funimation app into the main app of anime, rather than using superior Cruncyroll app). I do expect them putting day 1 releases in a long run. Just like with PSN vs XBL it is gonna be a solid eventually (it took Sony 2.5 generations for that). By that time I believe Xbox will remove Gold, will introduce the ability to stream the games you bought, will introduce additional streaming services into Game Pass subscription and who knows what else. So just like right now, the ecosystem of Xbox will be much more superior while PS ecosystem is gonna be solid but kinda limited.

Merging, game, anime, movies and music subscriptions into a package that is cheap is almost impossible. It's ridiculously expensive.

But it's interesting to think about as Sony has to fight Microsoft in a lot of fronts to remain competitive in the wider market.
 
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Hezekiah

Banned
:messenger_expressionless::messenger_expressionless:

Please go outside for a while. And talk to gamers. I have couple of gamers who play gamepass. and these are casuals, who dont use forums.
They spend a lot of time playing AAA on their phone on tablet do they.

Massive competition from free games with mobile. Plus who wants to play a game with $100m production values on a six inch screen with Mickey-Mouse audio.
 

kingfey

Banned
They spend a lot of time playing AAA on their phone on tablet do they.

Massive competition from free games with mobile. Plus who wants to play a game with $100m production values on a six inch screen with Mickey-Mouse audio.
I want to do that. imagine playing halo on my tablet, or my 6inch screen phone. its close to switch (just little bit 3 inch small). If people can play BOW and witcher 3 on switch, then those games arent bad. I used to play gamepass games on my phone too. Its fun.
 

Hezekiah

Banned
I want to do that. imagine playing halo on my tablet, or my 6inch screen phone. its close to switch (just little bit 3 inch small). If people can play BOW and witcher 3 on switch, then those games arent bad. I used to play gamepass games on my phone too. Its fun.
You and about three other people 😄.
 
So after a year PS Now still has the double of the content? That's what i'm reading from your post.
I do prefer PS exclusives over Xbox but come on... Don't be a fan boy. Gamepass has much newer content. All first party content, most new EA games after a few months after release.... Plus a cycle of newer games from other third parties.

PS now has a ton of content yes.... But I doubt many will love playing those really niche titles from the PS2 days or streaming PS3 games.

For years PS fans have been screaming about quality content and they have certainly had it with first party titles.... But inferring PS Now is the better subscription platform is laughable.
 

T-Cake

Member
PlayStation Now Wiki
As of 2020, there are over 800 games available, with over 300 of them available for download to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

Well I just stopped counting after titles beginning with A and B. Just those two letters had 100 games together. So colour me surprised, there really are a shit ton of games on there. Which probably explains why I spend more time scrolling through the library trying to find something to play and can't decide. :D
 
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yurinka

Member
Number of frames as in the game framerate? Or a display of the actual framerate on your device while playing? They probably don't do the former because majority of games fall in fixed categories of 60, 59, 30. Techniques we have now like DRS didn't exist for most older games though so it would maybe be nice to know of potential slowdown areas in certain games. OTOH, through emulator and good enough PCs playing those games now you probably don't have most or any of those frame drops.


Independently of the game's framerate, if you press a button during a frame, there is a time that the game+ original console/arcade took to process it and show the result. Back in the 80-90s, most needed 2 frames. Depending on the game or the platform, some other didn't show the reaction until maybe 3, 5, 8 frames later or even beyond. This is the internal input lag.

Retroarch has a tool supported by many cores that allows you to reduce this until 0 frames, meaning that if you press a button (let's say jump), in the next frame the emulator will show the result. What it does is to run two instances of the emulator (so will require some extra resources): one of them, the one registering your buton presses, is running a certain amount of frames you specified ahead of the instance of the emulator you're seeing and hearing. The instance that registers your inputs saves let's say a savedata with your inputs, which gets loaded by the one you're seeing. By doing this you can reduce the internal input lag that consoles/arcade/games had until zero. So you'll only basically only have the input lag coming from your controller and the display lag of your monitor and the input lag of your controller.

In order to know how many frames of internal input lag has a certain game, in Retroarch if you press the K key it gets paused and if you hit K again it loads the next frame. So you can press K, press and hold the jump (or the fastest action the character reacts to) or pause button in a console game and before holding it to press K several time until you see the game starts to react to it. Let's say it takes 3 frames. So you activate this option, set a number of 3 frames and try again: this time it will react just the frame after the one detected the input.

In PC, to reduce a bit your controller's input lag you can overclock the polling rate of the USB for each controller: this is, the speed that the computer checks if there has been any change in the button presses of your pad or arcade stick: the standard ones typically are 125 Hz (like Xbox controllers) or 250Hz(like PS controllers). There are tools for PC that you can use to increase it to 1000Hz (in fact you can go to 2000Hz or 8000Hz but isn't recommended because it can cause issues and 1000Hz is so fast enough. By doing this, in some cases you pressed a button at almost the end of a frame but you'll be able to register it in that same frame, while if not overclocked maybe it would have been registered in the next frame, meaning that by overclocking the controller you'll cut the controller's input lag in 1 frame for some of the presses (input lag for controllers is variable depending on which point of the frame you pressed it).

Regarding the display, if instead Vsync you you use G-Sync or freesync to avoid screen tearing and activate/set to ultra the GPU drivers setting of "low latency mode" you also reduce a bit the display lag.

But the issue is Sony (and if talking platform holders in general, Microsoft & Nintendo as well) can do both. It doesn't - and shouldn't - be a case of one or the other. The former automatically ensues the latter while the latter ensures a spotlight on specific games that can help give the feature and other games supported by it a boost in interest.
Yes, but they are running a business. They try to do profitable stuff. If they think something won't be profitable they don't do it. They also try to don't overspend on stuff they invest on: if a better but way more expansive way of doing things only is going to be noticed or appreciated by a tiny portion of players, pretty likely they will choose another not so good way to do that that is also going to be fine for most players but instead will cost them way less money and headaches.

If you ask me, I'd make a local native emulator for PS4, PC and mobile with many fancy stuff like shaders, overlays, trophies, resolution upscaling, trophies and may other things and would allow you to play using your discs and to dump your games in the HDD.

It would be a decent place to start, but if that were to be the totality of their efforts WRT PS1/2/3/PSP/Vita emulation in this service revamp, then it's going to feel like something of an empty gesture because, as seen with Microsoft lately, you eventually hit a hard ceiling with the re-licensing. Even if in Sony's case they end up re-licensing a lot more games due to the sheer size of their system libraries by comparison, it's still only going to cover a fraction of the total games available.

This could be the generation for platform holders to take game preservation seriously, we'll see if any of them step up to the plate. Microsoft's done a pretty good job so far but could do more; if Sony make the push to do more then that may motivate Microsoft to do more, and so on and so forth. Maybe even Nintendo finally starts to do something real with emulation.
At the end of the day everything is possible if Sony and the IP holders of the game want to do it, there aren't some licensing blocker (like let's say Ferrari not wanting to renew an Outrun license, some musician who has to sign but he died, some game rights belonging to a company that shut down without selling the rights to someone else etc) and see potential business behind it.

Game subscriptions as of today they are a small pie of the gaming business, but they saw there's potential there -not only looking at Netflix or Spotify at least as a big secondary business to get extra revenue and as an easy way to reach more players via streaming beyond their consoles. One of the things to make them work is to include a giant catalog, and that back catalog from legacy systems is a cheaper filler boosted by nostalgia for a few, that at least helps them to increase the game count in the comparisions against the competition.

So they may invest hard on it, but I don't see them considering it very seriously, probably because still doesn't give them enough revenue/profit.
 

yurinka

Member
Now as a standalone service and brand is going away.
As brand we don't know it because we don't know the name of the service and the tier.
As standalone service yes, they are merging it with PS Plus and are adding more things on top like games from more platforms and demos.
As service it will continue and will be bigger and better.
 
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Merging, game, anime, movies and music subscriptions into a package that is cheap is almost impossible. It's ridiculously expensive.
It is impossible. There are people believing that PS+ and PS Now will stay at 10$ though together. I think Sony won't introduce music and movies (for reasons I stated earlier), but they might introduce PS+ & PS Now & Anime with a price of 18-20. PS+ & PS Now will cost at least 12$ or probably 15$.

But it's interesting to think about as Sony has to fight Microsoft in a lot of fronts to remain competitive in the wider market.
It goes both ways. Sony has a strong position in media market - with their involvement in movies for example, allowing them to leverage cross media IP, while MS does not have any movie production (they partner with other streaming services though). In fact, MS seems to prefer having a strong core focus and go with partnerships with other stuff.
 
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Kupfer

Member
I don't have the nerve to read through this thread.
What happens to my membership that is valid until July 2024?
 

yurinka

Member
PS Now is going away 100%. The brand is too damaged at this point and unpopular at this point.
It isn't going away, it will continue, will receive games from more PS platforms (PS5, PS1, PSP), are working to bring it to mobile, are improving its streaming tech to improve more lag and image quality. And now will be sold bundled with PS Plus and new perks like extended demos.

They may rebrand it, that's all. They aren't killing it, they are enlarging it.

What happens to my membership that is valid until July 2024?
They didn't mentioned it. But super likely your PS Plus months would be exchanged for months of the tier 1 of the new service (which is the normal PS Plus) If you have instead PS Now they will be exchanged by the same months for the tier 3 of this service (which basically has PS Now (now with PS5, PS1 and PSP games too) + PS Plus + extended demos. If you have both PS Plus and Now, not sure but they may stack as months for tier 3 of this service.
 
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They may rebrand it, that's all. They aren't killing it, they are enlarging it.
PS Now label will dissappear as a separate service. There are gonna be PS+ tiers instead.

It is actually the similar situation as with Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass. Xbox Live Gold will dissappear.
 
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kyliethicc

Member
As brand we don't know it because we don't know the name of the service and the tier.
As standalone service yes, they are merging it with PS Plus and are adding more things on top like games from more platforms and demos.
As service it will continue and will be bigger and better.
The article literally says Now as a brand will be killed.
 
Will the older games be backwards compatible or just streamed? If streamed then meh. Also, I’d like a cheaper version of PS+ that allows me to just play online since the games are usually garbage, or make playing online free like it used to be, but that won’t happen.
 

MaulerX

Member
Basically they are replicating this:
Tier 1: Gold
Tier 2: Gamepass (current gen download only, no streaming)
Tier 3: Gamepass Ultimate (Gold + download & streaming Gamepass games with extra games from legacy platforms + a few extras like extended demos)

But I'd bet Sony would have the entire catalog of their tier 3 available to stream in all platforms and would include PS Plus/Gold in the tier 2 too.


Let's not forget that Game Pass Ultimate also includes EA Play and Game Pass for PC (so you have the option of playing your day one games in even higher fidelity and PC only games not available on console).
 
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On Demand

Banned
This is a year old, PSNow now has 13 fewer games (847) while GamePass has 45 more (428).

GP has 100 games in its catalog released in 2021 while PSNow has… 2 lol.

Your point changes nothing. PSnow still has more content available.

Content that will further be ahead when PS1PS2PSP are introduced.

If Sony is able to keep ahead without even trying, i can’t image next year when they put more of a effort into it and it’s in more markets.

The new service is pretty much going to eclipse gamepass indefinitely.
 
Now as a standalone service and brand is going away.

Sony phasing out PS Now is a step in the right direction. That service is not going to be successful. It will not reach a substantial amount of subscribers, no matter how they try.

Game streaming targeting the gamers (who would buy a console or PC anyway) is a mistake. They are looking at the wrong crowd of 'potential subscribers'. If they want game streaming to work, then they have to target the larger crowd of 2 billion casuals. For that, they have to think outside the box.

Integrating the PS Now model in the PS Plus though is the right move. They are building a better service on top of the already successful PS+. And it targets the usual loyal playstation crowd. Business-wise it's the right move.
 
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The new service is pretty much going to eclipse gamepass indefinitely.

I bet it will if the service will be counted in aggregate. The totality of PS Plus members will eclipse that of gamepass.

Sony's challenge is to entice the lower tier subscribers to upgrade to higher tier sub. It will be gradual but it's a step in the right direction.
 
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MScarpa

Member
"Our pitch, as you've heard, is 'new games, great games.' We have had this conversation before -- we are not going to go down the road of putting new releases titles into a subscription model. These games cost many millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop. We just don't see that as sustainable"

"We want to make the games bigger and better, and hopefully at some stage more persistent. So putting those into a subscription model on day one, for us, just doesn't make any sense. For others in a different situation, it might well make sense, but for us it doesn't. We want to expand and grow our existing ecosystem, and putting new games into a subscription model just doesn't sit with that."
-Jim Ryan, April 2021


Take that for what it is worth, but all this speculation about day one this and that was answered months ago.
Oh i get it. We believe him, but Phil, Phil is a fuckin liar? 😂 You know what they call this right?
 

Topher

Gold Member
Oh i get it. We believe him, but Phil, Phil is a fuckin liar? 😂 You know what they call this right?
Who called Phil a liar? Who mentioned Phil at all?

As far as believing him, what part of “take that for what it is worth” did you not understand?
 
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kensama

Member
According to the developer of the RPCS3 emulator and a Sony's internal engine team programmer (plus programmer in PS3 Insomniac games) PS5 can't properly emulate SPE/SPUs, would need additional hardware to do emulate properly the games take full advantage of the PS3 hardware. The reason is that even if modern hardware can rival in peak performance still can't match PS3's SPU sustained perfomance, and don't have enough registers. A good portion of the PS3 catalog, which doesn't take full advantage of this hardware, can be emulated properly, specially in the newer Intel (not AMD/RDNA) hardware.

PS2 emulation is already implemented in many PS2 games they sell -or include in PS Now- for PS4 and PS5. PS1 and PSP is possible, and PS3 emulation for some games too. Emulation for some other PS3 games at full performance isn't possible unless they include extra hardware.

The easier, but the faster and cheapest way to get PS1, PSP and PS3 is to make it via streaming since they already alre implemented in the PS3 hardware they use in the PS Now servers. Having PS1 and PSP limited to their PS Now tier makes me think they will have PS1 and PSP via PS Now streaming, even if I'd personally prefer local, offline emulation.


Ok thanks for explanations
 

RPS37

Member
I already don’t play or even have enough time to play enough games to justify a GP subscription, let alone another PSN subscription besides being able to play online.
 

MScarpa

Member
No, my posts are quite clear. And since you can't answer my questions about calling Phil a liar then I'll just assume you are pulling arguments out of your ass.



And I'm not a "kiddo".
Whatever works for you kiddo. 😉 Anything else you want to discuss?
 
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