Ever since its announcement earlier this year, Sony’s streaming PlayStation Now service has seen a number of bumps in the road. The program introduced a private beta a couple of months ago on the PlayStation 4 console, and users were a bit taken aback by the frustratingly high game rental rates ($30 for a 90-day rental of Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a bit much to ask, especially considering its $20 retail price). Now that the program’s gone into a full beta, Sony is working on making it more of a deal for gamers.
“We’ve heard you loud and clear for an update on a PS Now subscription option and want to reassure you that we are working on it,” said PlayStation Now senior director Jack Buser. “We think PS Now represents the next step towards the future of gaming and we’re excited to have the PlayStation Nation come along with us on the beginning of this journey.”
The PlayStation Now service is set to offer a number of classic PlayStation 3 titles for streaming on a multitude of devices, including televisions, tablets and smartphones, as well as Sony game systems like the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita. Currently, it’s only being offered for PlayStation 4, and there’s no word on when it will launch on other devices.
As for fixing the pricing issue on the games, nothing has been marked down as of yet (some games still show rates between $3.99 and $29.99), but Buser promised that some titles will “start seeing reduced pricing on some 4-hour rentals which will appear at $1.99.”
The PlayStation Now service is set to launch with over 100 PS3 titles, but there’s no word as of yet when older titles from the PlayStation/PlayStation 2 era are expected to launch. When asked by Kotaku upon when these games would arrive, Buser simply stated, “We don’t have anything specific to announce at this time.”
Here’s hoping Sony rights the wrongs of the PlayStation Now service before it’s set to go live somewhere near the end of 2014.
Source: Ars Technica
