Earlier today, Sony confirmed that a PlayStation Now subscription service is coming to the United States and Canada on January 13, giving you access to over 100 PlayStation 3 games through your PlayStation 4.
To clear up many questions that have popped up as a result, PlayStation Now Director of Marketing Peter Jamshidi went on the PS Blog, where he addressed the fact that only 100+ games are accessible with the PS Now subscription, despite roughly 200+ games on the service:
This is a great question. PS Now offers both individual game rentals and the upcoming subscription service.
The PS Now rental catalog already has 200+ games and games are added weekly so yes, you may find some games that will not be in the current subscription offering but can still be rented individually.
Subscriptions will give you access to 100+ games that get unlimited access and this catalog will evolve over time.
A full list of the 100+ titles included with the subscription wasn’t provided can be seen right here, and it will include Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, BioShock Infinite, Batman: Arkham City, NBA 2K14, Spelunky, The Last of Us and XCOM: Enemy Within, all of which go live in PS Now on January 13. Past that, Jamshidi says, “Both [the PS Now library and PS Now subscription library] will evolve over time with fresh content coming in on a regular basis.”
Another big question about PS Now is whether or not we might one day be able to stream games previously purchased through the PlayStation Store. As Jamshidi explained, PS Now and the PS Store are separate from each other:
PS Now overall is a separate and complimentary offering from purchased downloadable games from PS Store, and requires a separate purchase for either the rental or subscription.
Remember, the streaming service offers some distinct and value added features including the ability to quickly jump across the 100+ games offered without any downloads, and over time the ability to play these games on any PlayStation Now enabled devices.
A couple other pieces of information Jamshidi talked about are placed below:
- Game saves will be saved in the PS Now cloud servers. “If your membership runs out and you decide to come back later, your saves will be waiting.”
- There aren’t any plans for a discount on the PS Now subscription for PlayStation Plus members, nor is there any plans to offer a 1-year subscription.
- Mirroring what was talked about previously, he said, “There are some amazing games for PS1 and PS2 and our longer term vision is to go back further into the PlayStation generational library and offer those with PlayStation Now. Right now however, we are focused on bringing to users experiences from the amazing PS3 library.”
- In case it wasn’t clear, he said, “New games will be added to the subscription service on a monthly basis – we are big believers in keeping the game catalog fresh and interesting for our subscribers and this will evolve over time.”
- The PS Now subscription service will roll out to other PS Now enabled devices “over the coming months.”
Which titles do you hope to see offered in the 100+ available through the subscription?
[Source: PS Blog]
