Right now, PlayStation 4 owners in the US can enjoy 90 days of the PS3 racing game F1 2013 for the low, low price of $US49.99. Too rich for your blood? You could try 90 days of NASCAR 14 for $US39.99, or 90 days of Dirt 3 for $US26.99. Codemasters’ Grid 2 comes in at the relatively affordable $US22.99 — also for 90 days.
What if you’re not in the mood for a racing game? What if, say, you want to rent a nice meaty RPG? You could try Deus Ex: Revolution, which comes in at $US29.99 for 90 days, $US14.99 for 30 days, $US6.99 for seven days, and $US4.99 for four hours.
Or, if you’re feeling like some stealth action, you could rent Metal Gear Solid 4 at $US14.99 for 90 days, $US12.99 for 30 days, $US7.99 for seven days, and $US3.99 for four hours.
If those numbers are making your head hurt, you’re not alone. PlayStation Now — a streaming service that allows users to rent old PlayStation 3 games — entered open beta on the PlayStation 4 today, and with it, every PS4 owner has entered a fantasy world where Sony believes it’s acceptable to charge up to $US50 for 90-day rentals.
Last month, when Sony first launched pricing in the PlayStation Now closed beta, I called the costs insane. Things haven’t changed very much. The service — which now offers 100-something PS3 games for streaming on your PS4 — is still à la carte, and will still cost you way more than buying used PS3 games at GameStop or Best Buy ever would.
Earlier this week, when I had the chance to chat on the phone with PlayStation Now senior director Jack Buser and Gaikai chief business officer Robert Stevenson, I asked if they planned to lower their prices at all.
“One of those things that we heard about was we received some critical feedback around certain price points as you’re very familiar with,” said Buser. “As a direct result of that feedback, we’re gonna soon introduce titles starting at $US1.99. We hope this offers users a wider range of price points to choose from, and we encourage our testers to continue to tell us about what their experience is with every aspect of the service.”
During our conversation, Buser continually emphasised that Sony is listening to beta testers and will incorporate as much feedback as possible. The service is in beta, after all. Sony wants to hear to what people want.
So here’s my feedback: PlayStation Now games need to be cheaper. Who in the world thinks it’s OK that Sony wants you to pay $US14.99 for 30 days of Final Fantasy XIII-2 when you can buy it new for that same price at GameStop?
Sony’s new service isn’t even out of beta yet, and it already feels obsolete. We live in a world dominated by streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, which offer monthly subscriptions for unlimited access to their content. That’s the type of model that people want. Even EA knows that — though Sony doesn’t think their service has much value.
Granted, Sony’s already aware that fans would like to see them take the Netflix approach and offer subscription-based pricing. But they don’t see it as a replacement for piecemeal rentals.
“We are looking for the subscription offering to complement our rental offering,” Buser told me. “We believe both options provide gamers the freedom to discover and play games in a way that weren’t previously possible before.”
It’s unclear just what that subscription offering will look like — Buser wouldn’t go into details — but if it isn’t something like “unlimited rentals for a reasonable amount of money per month,” I don’t see how it could ever be good for gamers. We are talking about old games here, not the hottest new shipments that are coming in at $US59.99 a pop.
Two years ago, Sony helped sink the Vita by charging way too much for the proprietary memory cards you need in order to use it. History is repeating itself with PlayStation Now, as the folks behind the PS4 — who ostensibly care about and listen to their fans — continue to choose indefensible money-grabs over respecting and investing in their most loyal customers. That’s a real shame.
Right now, PlayStation Now’s pricing is just straight-up unacceptable. Which really is too bad, because in theory, Sony’s fancy new PS4 could be a powerhouse for fans of retro games. Sony has missed a grand opportunity to beat Nintendo at its own game and offer up its own version of the Virtual Console complete with selections from the past two decades of PlayStation gaming, from Final Fantasy VII to Uncharted 2.
And, yes, Sony’s inability to commit to getting PS1 and PS2 games running on PlayStation 4 is also a real shame, especially today, in the thick of the summer drought, as we all wait for this fall’s games to be delayed to next year.
I mean, just picture it: imagine a veritable buffet of PlayStation games from the last three generations, streaming and playable whenever you want, all for, say, $US20/month. Maybe you can only rent a couple of games at a time — or maybe you can only rent a few games every month — but instead of paying exorbitant prices for each of them, you pay for the all-you-can-eat special featuring as many games as Sony can stick on there.
Maybe we’ll get there one day. Hopefully. But today…
Well, today we have this:
Update: In response to this article, in which Sony had nothing to say about its plans to put PS1 and PS2 games on the streaming service PlayStation Now, the publisher sent over some additional clarification:
We are also currently considering measures to offer original PlayStation, PS2 and PS4 titles in the future, but at this time, only PS3 titles are being offered.
Not exactly total transparency, but at least they answered the question this time — and at least there’s some assurance that Sony hasn’t totally given up on plans to add older games to PlayStation Now.
PlayStation Now enters open beta on PS4 today.
Icons: www.flaticon.com
Comments
73 responses to “PlayStation Now Is Still Way Too Expensive”
And they made fun of EA Access. Sony should give everyone a free PS4 for this mess.
No EA access is still shit. Playstatiom Now is just that pile of dino shit from Jurassic Park.
Why is EA Access shit?
YOUR NAME IS FUCKING EPIC
The whole thing is the stupidest idea/ scam ever.
An emulation solution might not be perfect, but online streaming of games just doesn’t work right now.
Sony wants their customers to re-pay for games they already own (when their network already supports cross platform buys), pay to use games on the clock, play their single player games with unavoidable lag, downscale resolutions to fit bandwidth, chew up peoples download caps…. for what benifit?
I said yesterday that it will be funny to see what happens if Microsoft gets hardware BC running on the Xbone, because the ‘M$’ crowd who were so quick to hammer them for the original Xbone ‘always on’ plans seem to be largely missing right now.
An always online, streaming, pay for use solution is FAR more exploitative and offers far less benefits to customers than anything MS ever planned for the Xbone.
There is absolutely no equivalence between this and MS original plans for the XBone. You don’t need your PS4 online to use it, just to use PSNow. That’s like complaining that you can’t stream Netflix to your PS4 or play games online if it’s offline – the very service you’re talking about depends on that. The issue with the XBone plans were that you’d need to be connected even to play single player games by yourself which is something that doesn’t require an internet connection but was having it forced onto it anyway.
PS4 owners can (and, I’m sure, will) happily ignore PS Now and continue to use their console.
http://i.imgur.com/Y6iyEp2.jpg
Oops no idea where that came from… I’ll blame looking at the “M$” in the comment I was replying to 😛
Edited.
It’s a solution that requires an always-on connection, is exploitatively priced and offers no benefit to the customer.
No, it’s not exactly the same as what MS were proposing, but if you’re going to be objective then you should be critical of Sony here just like people were critical of MS then.
Saying “Oh it’s like Netflicks you can ignore it” is ridiculous. Games aren’t movies and the service to cost ratio for a product like that is entirely reasonable.
You could have ignored an always-on Xbone (or any other product) if you’d wanted to as well. It doesn’t mean it’s not shit for their customers who want to buy their products.
People who own Playstation products want BC, and Sony is offering it in the most onerous, expensive and exploitative manner possible.
You can take your Sony hat off for 30 seconds and be annoyed about that if you want, I promise it won’t kill you.
Given that Sony have a great history of providing cross-platform downloads where possible I, as a customer, had faith in them that if I was to buy a PS1/2/3 title online for my PS3 that if/ when an emulation solution came along for the PS4 that they’d be giving me free access or at least a hefty discount on that title.
This is the exact opposite of that, they’re not even trying to give me access to their content in a reasonable way.
Your inner fanboy doesn’t have to like it, but this is a great chance for MS to win back some of the good will lost during the middle of last year.
If they can get a BC system up and running within the next year that gives you free access to content already owned, that doesn’t eat into your cap the whole time you’re playing, that doesn’t hamper your games with unavoidable lag, that isn’t f*cking charging you against a clock…. That’s a lot better than what Sony are trying to do here.
So I’m guessing you didn’t actually read my comment below here that IS critical of this service, just for actual valid reasons (i.e. the pricing and the business model being ludicrous), not because it is anything at all like MS’s original XBone policies?
No I hadn’t, but having read them I do agree with most of your comments.
My original point was that the people who were piling shit on MS last year and hoisting Sony up as some kind of beacon of consumer love were suspiciously quiet now.
They aren’t the same, but what Sony is doing here is every bit (and then some IMO) as unjustifiable and greedy as anything MS has done recently.
Delivering a worse than necessary product (this thing WILL go down with your internet/ Sony’s servers, it WILL be laggy, it WILL chew up your internet cap) so that they can charge you absolutely ludicrous, by the hour prices for it is EA/ Simcity levels of shabby. That’s without factoring in that a lot of people have already paid full retail price for these games and that they’re often attached to their Sony Network accounts. There’s no f*cking reason at all that they can’t get the PS4 to emulate at least PS1/2 games and that they shouldn’t be free to people with PS+ accounts who’ve already bought them. They aren’t even trying to get PS3 BC working because they want to screw people behind a ludicrous paywall, simple as that.
You wrote above “The issue with the XBone plans were that you’d need to be connected even to play single player games by yourself which is something that doesn’t require an internet connection but was having it forced onto it anyway”, that’s EXACTLY the same thing that Sony are trying to do here and then some (charging BY THE HOUR and delivering a shittier product). That’s why the policies are comparable.
Make no mistake, Sony COULD get PS3 emulation working on the PS4 hardware just the same as they have for all their systems since the PS2. They’re doing this to f*ck their customers. Same as MS. Same as EA.
That applies to any service at all that requires the internet. PSNow is no different to any video or music streaming service out there – they all depend on having an internet connection that is up to the task.
They’re not remotely comparable. This is an optional service (that, I suspect, the vast majority of consumers will not take up). Your internet connection going down has no impact on your ability to play PS4 games either off BluRay or the hard drive (unless the games themselves require an internet connection), you just wouldn’t be able to stream from PSNow. Under MS’s original policies, it would have prevented you even playing a single player game you’d bought on physical media, effectively rendering your console useless. And that’s before you start going into the other issues it created in terms of trading/selling your old games etc.
The issue with PSNow is the pricing, not the policies.
It’s not the policy?
Do you honestly think that the best way to allow people to access PS3 games on the PS4 is to stream them in hi-def via the internet?
Honestly? You’re going to tell me that with the limitations, lag and server costs all factored in the absolute BEST engineering solution to deliver backwards compatibility to their customers is to have a policy of streaming video rather than to develop hardware emulation?
I don’t know if you understand this but games require feedback in a timely manner, if your game pauses to buffer or is slow that’s a significantly worse outcome than it is for a film. The limitations of the internet means that this service is going to deliver an inferior product to hardware emulation for everyone, let alone people with sh*t connections, it’s completely unavoidable within the limitations of 2014 technology. I’m pretty sure Sony would be aware of that.
So maybe you can explain to me why Sony have implemented what appears to be a highly impractical/ completely infeasible policy solution?
I’d suggest that they’re doing it because it’s an excuse to charge their customers again for products which they already own. It’s an excuse to implement a walled-garden where they can nickel-and-dime their customers for every hour that they play. They don’t care that it will be sh*t, they’re doing it because it stops their customers from playing the games which they already own in a manner that doesn’t earn Sony money.
It’s not the pricing at all. The pricing is ludicrous I agree, but it’s always going to be ludicrous with the streaming solution they came up with.
Under the streaming policy it’s not going to matter if it costs me 1c an hour, the bottom line is this product BY DESIGN is going to be a steaming pile because of the limitations of the internet when compared to any form of half-decent onboard emulation.
Hate to tell you but buying ANY gaming system is entirely optional. I’m not mad at them because I’m being forced to buy their games, I’m just annoyed that I won’t be able to play the PS1/2/3 games that are linked to my Playstation account in a reasonable fashion because Sony, in this case, are being greedy sh*tbags.
When EA intentionally hampered the usage of SimCity, making it often unplayable for users so that they could protect their own income people were (rightly) furious.
Right now Sony are implementing a BC solution that by design is going to deliver an unavoidably inferior product to their customers in order to allow them to restrict and charge an exorbitant price for games, many of which have already been purchased on other systems and which (you would expect) would have been free/cheap under an emulation system.
If you can’t see any similarity between that and the restrictive practices that MS were looking to implement then I think you need to brush the Sony pubes out of your eyes. They aren’t exactly the same, but Sony are being assholes here.
You seem to be missing the bigger picture.
This isn’t about getting PS3 games working on PS4. PS4 is just the testbed. It’s about expanding it to other devices. The goal is to be able to stream games to TVs, tablets, or pretty much any other device without requiring a console at all.
And with that, your credibility in this discussion vanished. Have a nice day.
Not that it matters to me since I doubt this will ever see the light of day in Australia and even if it does my PS4 uses wifi for networking so it wouldn’t be able to use it anyway, but this is just stupidity. The only way this would make sense would be if it was a Netflix style all-you-can-stream model.
Only having PS3 games on there is even sillier. For starters, I suspect the vast majority of PS3’s are still hooked up to TV’s out there – either because the owners have not yet upgraded to PS4 or because the PS4’s woeful lack of media options means the PS3 is still hanging around for that purpose. Combine that with the fact that all those PS3 games are still widely (and cheaply) available on physical media and this service has no reason to exist.
At the very least PS2 games are a bit harder to come by these days since most retailers don’t stock them anymore, ditto PS1 games (although there are quite a few available on the PS Store). The end result being that the only real market for this seems to be PS4 owners who don’t have a PS3 but want to pay a lot of money to experience those older games. And as the PS4 catalogue developers, there will be even fewer people interested in that.
Guilty as charged!
Haha hypocritical at its best, originally I thought the EA comment from Sony was awesome but after reading this I am thinking it was only because Sony’s cut wasn’t big enough… omg Sony is turning into XBONE!
I’m sorry Sony wishes it was Xbox one buddy…. I own both and the Ps4 is an absaloute joke… still waiting for some real first party titles
it’s an absaloute Farce if I wanted to play annual activision ubisoft or ea games I’ll just use my gorram PC…
at least with the Xb1 there are some quality games I have thrown heaps of hours into FM5, PvZ, Titanfall… Just to name a few
To be honest its been a pretty shitty year for games, I am a PC player and if there’s nothing on XB1 PS4 or PC.. maybe its just shit luck.
Two questions.
What are they smoking, and where can I get some?
Don’t get angry, just don’t buy it and laugh in their face when they try to get you to. They’ll get the message soon enough. Money is the universal language.
It’s just Sony being Sony. Charging way too much for far too little as they do with everything else! I’m in no hurry to go out and buy a ps4 now that’s for sure!
Ah, the peoples Sony finally falls, showing their true colours!
Personally I think this is a bigger clusterfk than the original Xbox One E3 restrictions, at least they had some benefits!
Seriously, what is the appeal of PlayStation Now when you can still go into EB, buy a PS3, and buy most of these games at rock bottom prices. It wouldn’t even take many games to get ahead by doing that, and you get a better experience by not having to stream games over the internet!
yeah a COMPLETELY optional service is a bigger folly than trying to ensure nobody can trade their games and their console has to be online almost 24/7.
While being able to digitally share games with family and friends digitally, and being able to digitally activate games bought on disc so you no longer need disc checking copy protection.
Hence the benefits were also there.
Hell, if they made it optional right now, I’d sign up. Personally the benefits outweigh the restrictions, I don’t trade, and I don’t go offline, but I understand some of the restrictions weren’t for everyone.
All that stuff would have been completely fine if they’d applied it to digitally distributed games, and left physical distribution as it was. MS could have had their cake and eaten it that way. In fact they still can – there’s no reason why they couldn’t enable sharing of games bought off XBL right now if they wanted to.
I think the problem people had (myself included) was MS trying to force the restrictions and limitations of digital distribution onto physical distribution when it was completely unnecessary to do so.
Publishers and distributors put them in a stranglehold when it comes to digital pricing though, it will always be more, or they wont stock their products giving the competition an advantage. Being able to buy AAA game 30% off on launch at BigW and then get all the advantages, while not having to perform a 40gb download is definitely appealing.
I don’t know how true that is though. I always thought it to be the case, but then you see something like The Last Of Us remastered which is $63 on PSN and $79 in JB/EB. And they’re still selling it.
Let’s not forget, also denying optional services from being on the console (EA Access), because Sony wants to speak on your behalf and tell you that it’s not good value then coming out with this sort of pricing.
Most important thing to keep in to mind is that the online check-ins never made it to the Xbox release, meanwhile you’re comparing it to things that Sony have actually pushed out to customers.
Even if the decision to deny EA Access was to support their own thing I still congratulate Sony for the decision. EA Access is as much a “scam” as people are making this out to be and more fool MS for giving in to them.
With EA access you give them a monthly fee and they give you access to some games, but it’s still just an optional price packaging system. It might not be good value but at least there’s other ways to access the content you want through other means. If you don’t like it, buy the games outright like you can on PS4. It’s not taking anything away from anybody.
Taking games that could easily be emulated and which your customers have already paid for and making them only accessible on a by-the-hour fee while delivering a vastly sub-par product (laggy and potentially down-scaled) in order to allow you to charge by the day is extremely f*cking low.
How f*cking one eyed do you have to be to congratulate Sony for turning down what is essentially EA price packaging system (knowing that on MS systems content will still be available in EXACTLY the same way as it is on PS anyway) while defending Sony for hiding content behind an expensive and onerous (in a network sense) paywall?
Seriously mate. All games companies are just businesses, you can’t be THAT blind.
Buying a console is ALSO completely optional, hate to tell you.
I’d argue that while BC isn’t as bigger deal as the functioning of a console, I think going out of their way to provide a bandwidth intensive, sub-par product that runs and looks worse than necessary and then asking people to pay exorbitant by the hour fees to play games they’ve already bought in their (otherwise cross platform) Playstation accounts…. I think that on it’s own it’s actually a shabbier and less justifiable practice than anything MS proposed with the Xbone.
At least there were SOME benefits to their plan; discless gaming, the sharing stuff…. There were some genuinely cool things about the Xbone plans even if it would have been a freaking disaster if it had gone ahead and I’m damn glad it didn’t.
This BC plan is just straight up “Here’s the worst product imaginable. Pay lots for it or f*ck off”.
You can ignore it if you want, but as someone who wants BC on my PS4 and who has been downloading PS3 games instead of buying them retail because I had faith in Sony not to do this kind of thing I’m pretty annoyed. It’s as greedy and as anti-consumer as just about anything I can think of in recent years. It’s EA/ Simcity levels of unjustifiable.
1 word from the checkout that sums it up: SCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM
A scam involves taking someones money and not providing them with a service, or try to steal money out of someone and giving nothing in return
This isnt a scam, its just a ridiculously overpriced service that has very niche (if any) appeal to the common gamer
Has every single person reading this article completely blanked the word BETA? Funnily enough BETAs are often used to trial part of a system, not put the completed product out there. So it is not really surprising at all that they only have PS3 games up currently, perhaps that was the easiest option for them to trial the service, as a BETA. This also applies to the pricing scheme, it is a service, that Sony want you to pay for, because that is what lets them provide more services, of course they are going to try and get the most profit they can for it. Yes currently it seems way over priced for what it is, maybe that will apply to everyone and they will change the structure at launch, you know after the BETA.
Seriously this whole bash an entire company for something we don’t absolutely know for cetain yet thing is starting to get real depressing. It it any wonder why gamers get labeled as entitled when we can’t even let someone finish a product before we start declaring we will boycott it?
They might be high-balling us on their opening bid, but anyone who’s done a reasonable amount of negotiation knows that the opening bids say a LOT about where both parties are hoping to end up. And this opening bid is downright insulting.
Insulting to you and me but let’s not forget Sony has a whole lot more market research than you and me.
They aren’t stupid, they have been in these games from well before I was born at least. They wouldn’t put this price out without a plan, and it’s either they see a big enough market in people willing to pay these prices or they are just testing the waters on the issue. Personally I have a feeling it’s a PS3 all over again, it is just too soon for this product to be viable.
(Replying, I assume you meant *aren’t stupid.)
It’s all well and good to have confidence in someone by virtue of how many billion they have riding on their competence. Because surely no-one would fuck that up, right? And yet companies make glaringly obvious mistakes all the time. Video game companies especially, in ways we’re all familiar with. They fail and die, too. No-one’s immune to stupidity, no matter how good they might think their market research data is.
I think you might be right on the PS3 thing – they fucked that up in the beginning, too, and they paid for it dearly, allowing the 360 to retain then-‘next-gen’ primacy for several years. Part of their rallying charge was grudgingly dropping their prices to something people would actually pay, and the published up-ticks of PS+ (multiplayer held to ransom on the PS4 notwithstanding) in recent years has unsurprisingly corresponded to an increase in the value of the service. I assume they didn’t go into those early terrible decisions blind, either. I’m sure they had ‘a lot more market research’ then, too, than the pundits of the day (me included) who were vindicated by reality.
Taking the cynic’s side of a tossed coin is an easy out, but it’s depressingly right, too often.
It’s definitely giving them too much credit to assume they have learned well from all of their mistakes. It might’ve seemed that way with their on-point competition with Microsoft so far, this generation, but no-one’s immune to a hubris-inspired fall.
Well yeah of course they can fuck it all up, as I mentioned with the PS3 thing, but that doesn;t mean there wasn’t a plan for it and they did turn it around eventually.
But that’s part of my point in the first place they DID turn it around with the PS3, sure it took time but they did. They can still turn it around with this, maybe in time, hence why it annoys me that everyone is just happy to sandbag it off the bat without waiting for the final product or even when it’s applicable to them. PlayStation Now could be years away for Aus, perhaps even never, but the way half these comments react it’s like Sony is already siphoning money straight from their bank accounts.
But don’t take my point as just a defense of Sony thing either, it’s pretty broad these days. It seems nobody can announce anything in the gaming world without everyone picking it apart based on assumptions and half truths.
To be fair, that’s how draconian xbone DRM got tossed out the window: hyper-reactionary online outrage culture.
For all its negativity, there’s a value to a wall of hostile feedback IF something useful and consumer-friendly can be fished out of the muck, and IF the target of Internet Ire actually deigns to listen to the (admittedly rabid and twitchy) hand that feeds.
The xbone DRM stuff wasn’t really based on assumptions or lack of info, they outlined it pretty clearly and people said I don’t want it, did some people go way over the top like this matter? They sure did. People not wanting a product, or expressing disinterest is not the problem, of course people know what they do and do not want, but this unjustified and unwarranted rage over everything is only hurting the consumer image for the industry.
What I’m seeing here is people saying, “It’s ridiculously overpriced.” Doesn’t seem much wiggle room for doubt or lack of information. We have information, and it’s ugly. Worth letting Sony know. If they move the goalposts on price, I’m sure the response will change. People are pretty amenable to PS+, after all.
Addendum: My main point in calling this insulting and implying that it’s stupid is that beta is a golden opportunity for them to have gone temporarily with free allowing price-hikes (to adjust to market) with impunity, got market research from actual users instead of hypothetical to test the value vs actual service instead of hypothetical service, and generated excitement/enthusiasm instead of derision and setting a hostile tone that they’ll need PR activity to claw their way back from. Not to mention the ill-will that will undoubtedly be generated by users who’ve paid for a beta experience that doesn’t work properly. That barely flies on Steam with passionate fans who accept they’re funding an underdog indie dev, Sony can’t trade on the same goodwill. You know the old saying, you only make one first impression.
But this is more a beta on the pricing and marketability of the product. The product more or less works, Gaikai was around long before Sony bought it, not like its a brand new service untested by people.
I think I understand the pricing structure, they want to give you the illusion of a fair deal while still raking in maximum profit. That’s why a 3 month rental is almost the cost of a new game.
Generally they are aware we buy a game play for a period of about 3 months and trade it in. The problem is they are doing this to PS3 games that we should be getting cheap as they’ve made their money off them the first time.
To be clear I say I think I understand it, I do not agree with it.
And this is part of the testing process. If everyone looked at the prices, and kept their mouths shut about it, those are the prices that would stick. But because of public backlash, they will likely reduce it to something more reasonable. Sure, people are getting a bit over the top about it, but that just drives the message home that these are not the prices we’d be happy with paying.
Vote with your wallet not with your mouth, that is the only thing any corporation is going to listen to.
But you may be missing the fact that they received the same feedback, very loudly from the ALPHA and that the majority of these prices would have to of been negotiated with the publisher before it would appear on the service. In this case, in order for the prices to change from the BETA to LAUNCH, Sony needs to renegotiate with every publisher on the price point that their game will appear on the service for, which has already happened between the ALPHA and the BETA so these price points accurately reflect where the publishers want these price points at.
Also IMO Sony has gone about this all wrong – charging people as if it was a LIVE service while still in BETA and ALPHA is wrong. BETA and ALPHA is about testing stability and bug testing, not gauging your customers reactions to how much they are willing to pay.
Yay now I have even less of a reason to play with my ps4. Why did I even bother getting a new console again??
Your logic distortion field is pretty good man.
Destiny? Next Gen Games?
As much as I like sony – It’s crap like this that annoys the hell out of me.
First things first: BETA’s should be free – Users are doing a lot of free work for the company by playing betas – How they can even justify a 90 day subscription of an EMULATION of a game released last year on PS3 at even a price point of $10 would have baffled me – To see it 5x an already expencive price – it’s like they don’t even want this to work.
Its really a shame because there was so much potential here but Sony keeps shooting itself in the foot with this service – they seem to be cutting costs and trying to recouperate costs before the servervice has even properly launched.
*IT SHOULD BE A LONG TERM INVESTMENT* – the service as a whole in my eyes should be done correctly from the start. Getting as many people onto it – A month of free beta – stress testing for it to be a major feature so that all consoles when they have finished their production cycles can be a part of the Playstation now collection.
Anyways that’s my input.
Yeah man you hit the nail on the Head, why the Hell is Sony charging for a BETA product? they should be paying the consumer for testing it if anything?
And also sony are notorious for leaving products in “beta” for ever… look at PS Home???
also why are they prioritizing this crap? they said PS4 is for the gamers?? No gamer I know would want this shit
This is reminding me of when the PS Store was first released and games would stay (on the AUS store at least) at full price with no price reductions. Working at Sainsburys (UK supermarket) I kept on seeing a combo ‘deal’ of Saving Private Ryan on VHS and Medal of Honor on PSOne for 20GBP. That wouldn’t’ve been a problem except this was in 2005-6 when DVDs were a pound a penny and the PS2 was in full flow. The people doing the pricing didn’t keep up with the times and figure out that in this industry, old games are expected to be offered at cheaper prices 3-4 months after release (barring AAA titles)
Also, my first impressions of Playstation Now was that you’d also have the option of ‘buying’ a PS1/2/3 title to stream whenever you want, not to have a 30/90 day window to play older games. I was hoping to build an equivalent of my Steam library on my PS4, not to have to keep on renting out old games whenever I had a hankering to play them. Either that or have a PS Now subscription of $5-10 a month or something on top of PS Plus and you can play whatever game you want.
The pricing per individual game just isn’t going to work imo.
Had a look through. Not a single game I would get.
What’s worse is Sony were the first to hit pocket Microsoft for “plans” and so on… wonder if Ms would do the same?
Call me frustrated but waiting for good AAA titles on next gen to justify the console and all that seems coming out is garbage like this? priorities? nah $$$
Yeah…. ok. You guys are idiots for pricing it like that. Why would anyone pay $50 for a game so you can play it for 90 days? Why? Did anyone in Sony’s pricing team bother asking WHY?!
It’s almost as if some tone-deaf executive asked what the little people pay for a game rental, and when they were told ‘about ten bucks a month, for three’ (edit: clarification: 3x games – eg, gamefly/netflix), they incorrectly assumed that meant ‘ten bucks discount off full retail price for three months’.
These prices need to go down by a goddamn order of magnitude before they provide any kind of value incentive to put up with the plethora of other drawbacks the delivery method saddles them with.
The only rational explanation I can think of for this is Sony’s bigger picture goal of using this to bring gaming content to other devices e.g. TVs, tablets, etc without a console (or just with a microconsole like the Vita TV or whatever the hell they’re calling it now).
Assuming the actual quality of the service is acceptable for playing games, perhaps it might appear worthwhile if you were accessing these games without that initial outlay of hundreds of dollars for a console? Maybe? That might enable them to target a more casual audience that doesn’t want to buy a console. But on the other hand, that audience isn’t likely to be willing to pay $50 to rent a game, either.
Nope, sorry. I gave it my best shot but I’ve got nothing 😛
I’m thinking it’s their first shot at bringing gamers an option to take advantage of the ‘brave new digital future’ glimpsed in the early xbone plans. Some details different, some outright absurd pricing, but I’m getting an ‘if you build it, they will come’ vibe to tackling the Future of Gaming. Only thing I can think of.
I’m pretty sure Kevin Costner wasn’t charging people $50 a ticket to get into his baseball field in Field of Dreams, though 😛
Maybe in the Directors cut he was.
Honestly I’ll probably use the service if the prices improve a bit. Once I finish a game I never touch it again, so renting it is fine for me. eg I really wanna play Modern Warfare 3 for the singleplayer campaign but I know after that 6 hour rollercoaster ride is over I’ll never touch it again, so buying the full game is a silly idea.
Bit miffed the “beta” is charging so much though, I would’ve thought they’d charge less to get us hooked on it first…? (Or even, you know, free since it’s a beta… a word which has long lost its real meaning I suppose)
I don’t think it is a scam, so much as it will cost Sony a shitload of money to stream games in real-time.
I think it is just one of those things that works out costing them too much, so by the time they whack any kind of profit on top, it ends up being too expensive, especially for old content.
It’s not a Scam, it’s overpriced but it is legitimate.
Me selling Hover Tanks to North Korea is a Scam.
Be interested who here in Aus can use the service well. Am on a decent adsl 2+ connection and I fail the test. Anyone on NBN or fast Cable want to check it?
It’s a Beta, give it time – not so fussed on it anyway as I’m more of a Retro gamer.
Now if they did have PS1 & PS2 support count me in (Trophy support would be Heaven) but in the mean time, PS Now disinterests me.
Yes the prices are steep and any monkey can figure out it’s cheaper to buy a pre-owned version of the game than to rent it. But it’s a Beta nuff’ said, I’m sure Sony will put 2 & 2 together when they see their sales statistics and adjust it from there to entice customers on renting. Time will tell I guess.
I don’t get what everyone’s whinging about. $7 for 7 days is a helluva lot cheaper than renting it from a brick-and-mortar store. If you’re going to play the game for three months just BUY THE DAMN GAME.
But maybe it’s just me that only really plays games I can knock out in a weekend.
If the PS4 cannot play PS1 games (my own discs), I’m not going to buy one.
I’m not F***ing paying for something I already own, also there is no excuse for not getting an official emulation addon supporting every game working 100% within a year from now, they created the damn thing after all.
Sony should not think for a second that they will get away with a stream-only offering where they try to double dip people on PS1 game sales. It ain’t happenin’
Streaming anything that you should have an actual copy of is just plain dumb.
Why do people insist on trying to rationalise things that are just options that you can choose to do or not? Especially with 500 words that are entirely JUST their perspective and no actual clinical evaluation. Just… don’t or something, I dunno.
“Why are people expressing opinions and questioning this decision by Sony?! Surely they should know that if they just don’t think about it then everything Sony does will be purely in the interests of their customers!
They aren’t the same as EA of M$ dammit!!!”
*sobs uncontrollably*
@braaains
Poor taste comment aside (sorry, that was a bit graphic), you REALLY want to give Sony the benefit of the doubt on everything don’t you?
That’s a wonderful way to treat your loyal customers who just bought a brand new $500 system.
‘Hey guys, thanks for buying that brand new PS4! Its the cutting edge in console technology.
We’re going to use it as a testbed for a tech that would have been possible for free on any screen with an internet connection!
Hope you don’t mind paying against the clock for all those PS1,2 and 3 games that you loyally bought from our store and that we linked for free on our other compatible systems.
You’ll get to enjoy them downscaled and with newly added lag that they weren’t in anyway designed for. All this for just $8 an hour!
Lots of love, Sony
P.S. Better call your ISP and upgrade your package. In fact better move to another country if you want it to work at all.
Those prices are INSANE. I know most people with next-gen consoles are demonstrating that they have a lot of disposable income they don’t mind taking risks with, but… seriously? I can’t imagine ever being okay with the idea of renting a game for $50.
So even after some of us forked out $550 – $600, Sony still wants to charge us rental fees for old games that aren’t even AAA titles because they didn’t have the time to do backwards compatability? How ridiculous. Ontop of that, the PS4 may be vastly superior in terms of graphics and processing power but when it comes down to features it pales in comparison to the PS3. A browser that doesn’t have flash because Sony didn’t consider it at the time, a complete lack of free multimedia and to top it all off the inability to access your USB Device. Then there’s the games. I’m sorry, but PS4 remasters of PS3 Games should not be the cost of a brand new game. A slight graphics improvement does not warrant prices of up to $100. If anything has been proven, it’s that next-gen was released two years too early.