If you find yourself asking, “Is PlayStation Now worth it?”, here are the top reasons to purchase a subscription for Sony’s bargain of an online game streaming service.
PlayStation Now has a simple structure: you purchase a pass to play games in a library of over 700 titles, ranging from blockbusters to indie titles to retro games, all seeking to be discovered at a casual pace.
The concept behind PlayStation Now opens up the gaming industry into a foray of new customers that may feel blasé about committing to paying a full MSRP for a game they’re not sure they will like. It is understandably difficult to find the right kind of video game for your tastes, as even a title with glowing reviews or a cult following may seem unimpressive in your first few hours of playing it.
One of the benefits of the gaming industry as a whole here is that it further impresses the importance of drawing in your audience from the get go. Keeping players attached to your game is something else that PlayStation Now ensures delivery of, because if a game has an amazingly explosive opening with a lackluster followup, there’s no shame in a gamer putting down the game and moving on to the next in their queue.
The streaming itself works more naturally than you may have anticipated. The connection rarely falters in my playthroughs with 40 MPS upload and 15 MPS download. That’s nowhere near an impressive Wi-fi setup, but it works much more seamlessly than I would have anticipated. Much like Netflix’s services, it seems as though Sony invested the time and work behind creating stellar servers that are adept at loading assets before they are to be used so as to keep you in the game without a hitch.
Looking through all of the titles on PlayStation Now, I was excitedly overwhelmed. Those 700+ titles really do have a little something for everyone. It’s a “oh, I missed this game when it came out” sort of service, and less of a “I’ll wait a couple months after the game releases for it to be predictably added to the PlayStation Now library” sort of thing.
Some of the triple A titles that caught my attention were the first Red Dead Redemption, many of the titles in the Resident Evil Series, a Katamari, Fallout titles, The Last of Us, and many, many others. It would be exhaustive to list out even just the games I added to my queue. If you need any further convincing that the PlayStation Now library fits your desires, I highly recommend checking out the library listing for yourself on Sony’s website.
Loading up games is the only, very minor setback. It takes around two to five minutes for any given title to load up on my launch-day PlayStation 4; I can only imagine that that loading time crunches down to one minute or less with a stronger internet connection than mine, along with the beefy processor of the latest PlayStation 4 Pro consoles. There are convenient cloud saves, which is handy for when the feature in which you time out to “make room on the server for active players” comes into play. Pausing and re-entering right where you left off is a breeze with this intuitive and handy save system. You can even download some titles, making the package an ever sweeter deal for those with very weak internet connections.
If you’re still on the fence about subscribing to PlayStation Now, do try out the seven day free trial. I promise that you will be sold on how PlayStation Now will fill your nights of “I don’t know what kind of game that I want to play, but I really like ones like Limbo and Fat Princess.” The full pricing is already a steal if you make good use of the subscription, and often goes on sale sporadically for much less than the standard $79.99 for the 12 month subscription.
Is PlayStation Now worth it? I have no doubt in my mind that this is one of the most revolutionary tactics in the whole of the gaming industry storefront. Imagining the possibilities of major gaming giant Nintendo picking up this idea for their home consoles is a thrill that of which dreams are made of.
For now, I’ll happily take my PlayStation Now.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.