$19.99 ($9.99-$14.99 with plus) a month for unlimited access to all games available is fair to me, though I personally wouldn't subscribe at that price.Do you have any suggestions as to how much it should cost or how much you're willing to pay? There's no doubt Sony is looking for feedback.
I think people would pay a considerable convenience premium to have a game instantly at a slightly higher cost even if they don't own it. Especially if I don't have to download 30 gb or go to the store.
$19.99 ($9.99-$14.99 with plus) a month for unlimited access to all games available is fair to me, though I personally wouldn't subscribe at that price.
While the reactions are valuable, we don't only need to convince Sony, but the publishers. They can suggest a pricing structure, but they can't force one. They don't want to scare them off. Unfortunately, as I said before, Square Enix, needs a lot of convincing. They have a lot of games on PS Now and they make up the majority of the poorly priced rentals. It's publishers, not Sony, that might keep PS Now from really taking off. What Sony should do is put their 1st party stuff and lead the charge.
Price it in line with Netflix $8-9/month. They are the market leader in media streaming.
There's a huge gulf between streaming movies and games. Netflix would be dead in the water if the audio lagged a few seconds behind the image.
You won't ever see that. I think the 7-day price they have is reasonable now though, looks like either $6 or $7 depending on who sets the price. And a month for $8 for most games. Obviously they want everyone to focus on those two brackets, the 4-hr and 90-day ones just seem to be causing the real problems with people here.If I was Mr. Sony business man I would make it like this:
$2.99 = 2 days.
Will you be able to BUY old PS1/PS2 games using PS Now?
So they listened! 4 hour rentals are now gone.
No. PlayStation Now's just a rental service.
That's a start. Now they need to get rid of the ridiculous prices.
That's not a start. The 4 hour rental was convenient for some. It was nice being able to try out a lot of games for relatively cheap.
I wish that amount for 4 hours was cheap for me. Must be nice.
$6-7 for a week isn't ridiculous. New games will probably be higher but the baseline is reasonable for the sake of convenience you're getting.That's a start. Now they need to get rid of the ridiculous prices.
That's not a start. The 4 hour rental was convenient for some. It was nice being able to try out a lot of games for relatively cheap.
You shouldn't have to pay to test the game. There should be an adaptive free rental period depending on the game. Longer for RPG's, shorter for PSN titles.
I think people would pay a considerable convenience premium to have a game instantly at a slightly higher cost even if they don't own it. Especially if I don't have to download 30 gb or go to the store.
why should it be free to "test the game"? unless it's for like 5 minutes
Why should it cost money to demo a title?
I'd pay $99 a year. I wonder if that's enough to entice them.
it's not a demo
you realize that's less than netflix? subscription will definitely be more than that
Throw me out an estimate of what you think it'll be. I haven't been following this thing but I'm interested in the subscription service.
4 hours on a game like Alpha Protocol or Dues Ex is a demo...
It really depends on what the subscription offers, I bet it would more than likely be something like 15-20 a month, and even then it won't be a "all you can eat" thing
There's a huge gulf between streaming movies and games. Netflix would be dead in the water if the audio lagged a few seconds behind the image.
If companies are all for an all cloud/digital future, wouldn't it make sense to have the entry bar as low as possible to get more accurate results from that approach? I don't really get this all profit mentality without taking risks.
$6-7 for a week isn't ridiculous. New games will probably be higher but the baseline is reasonable for the sake of convenience you're getting.
IMO the 4 hr rental for some games should have been free, but I don't understand the economics associated with PSNOW
Well with how short some games are recently, they'd be giving people free games.
Well with how short some games are recently, they'd be giving people free games.
What do you guys think about, for PS+ subs, one free rental (chosen by them) for the month on PS Now?
why should it be free to "test the game"? unless it's for like 5 minutes
I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on FFXIII for $7 for the week, just to finally see what the hell's wrong with that game and leave no physical evidence, ha. I figure an RPG is more suited for streaming too, since any lag doesn't really matter as much.
They chose some interesting free beta titles, the shmup and Space Ace the most interesting ones since it's a good way to tell how the lag really does affect things in a game where it matters. Space Ace was surprisingly responsive, and it shows off the quality of the stream since the picture looked like an HD cartoon with no artifacts to be seen. The shmup was very playable, but I have a feeling the controls in the game itself were meant to be a little loose. But for RPGs and anything turn-based, Now seems like it's ready to work well.
New hardware implies new experiences, and while we're used to looking to the biggest, most expensive games to find that originality, there's a growing sense that, this time, the new experience will be more fundamental. As I talk to Yoshida, the most distinctive new experience of this generation seems to be choice: what to play, how to play it, how much it costs, and who you share it with. The games may well be familiar, but the structure around them has changed irrevocably.
With that in mind, PlayStation Now seems like a gilt-edged opportunity for Sony to pull even further away from the pack, offering its users a breadth and immediacy of choice that neither Nintendo nor Microsoft has any obvious plans to rival. Already in closed beta and scheduled to enter open beta in the US and Canada at the end of this month, the nascent cloud service has the seductive potential to be the Netflix or Spotify of gaming. At the very least, Yoshida says, that is Sony's intention.
"We have the vision of bringing hundreds and thousands of PlayStation games to every screen," he says, cautiously. "That's the vision, but we're taking one step at a time. There's investment in the server farm, the tech, internet latency and bandwidth. We have to start from somewhere.
"Wifi is a challenge. Typically, we recommend 5mbps for 720p quality. That's a challenge, especially in some markets. But we also view it as a matter of time, because the infrastructure just gets better and better."
That's almost certainly true, but PlayStation Now's business model remains a prominent and potentially ruinous issue. Reports of pricing in the beta have been what can be charitably described as "schizophrenic," varying from game to game and with price-points for everything from a few hours to three months' rental. In the most egregious examples, renting a game for a few months actually costs more than buying it outright on the PlayStation Store. Yoshida quite rightly describes PlayStation Now as a work-in-progress, but even at this early stage it's clear that a lot of work needs to be done, and, with publishers heavily involved in setting the prices, there is reasonable doubt over whether the industry has the courage of its convictions.
More than anything, Spotify and Netflix have proved that, when it comes to entertainment streaming services, there's a huge audience out there for the one-price, all-you-can-eat approach, and it seems unlikely that games will be treated as a special case. To put it bluntly, the market may already have spoken, and Yoshida insists that Sony is listening.
"We don't know yet," he says about the possibility of a Netflix-esque model for PlayStation Now. "We have been saying that we're looking at doing a subscription model, in addition to rental. Or vice versa: rental in addition to subscription. We're calling it a beta still, and we'll call it that even after it launches in the US and Canada at the end of July. It will still be called an open beta, because we expect it to keep changing in many ways. People are jumping to conclusions.
"I saw some people saying that PS Now is dead on arrival," he laughs, then there's that shake of the head again. "So... it's feedback. This is a long-term strategy for us, and every reaction is valuable."