I don’t like January. It’s cold (no seriously – We’re experiencing an Arctic Deep freeze up here) dreary, nothing much to look forward to but the small glimmer of awesome comes in the form of CES. A place for all us techno-junkies to drool over the latest, greatest and emerging technologies. Yesterday, a little piece of awesome was announced by Sony. Finally they have lifted some details on their Gaikai streaming service and it’s got a whole heck of a lot more meat to it than I had imagined for the launch.
“Playstation Now” is expected to launch in the summer (in the US) with a “Closed Beta” to take place this winter. The streaming service is going to be available across all current Playstation platforms and Sony TVs with future plans to launch on other platforms. Sony states that a 5Mbps internet connection is required for this service. No news on pricing or how it will all play out for users but I suspect it’s going to be similar to Netflix with an all you can eat monthly subscription model for older titles. I can’t see new games become a part of this service unless they make them available for say $5 per day of rental.
Anyway – that’s some pretty exciting news. What do you think?
My question (not being a PS guy) is what’s doing with their matchmaking community platform? It seems Xbox has it all over them where social is concerned.
Hey Jim – Thanks for stopping by.
I agree that MS has the community/social aspect of gaming down to a science. And that has always been a gripe of mine with PSN, but you have to be a little envious of this information and can’t help but wonder what (if anything) MS has planned.
There’s no doubt that Steam was years ahead of it’s time and it’s good to see that consols are catching up. I’m not a PS hater by any means and I would seriously consider jumping to the PS if they could get their act together on multiplayer/social/community. It’s not that hard and yet, Sony just doesn’t seem to get that aspect. I hope that changes.
MS already has a range of content available, but I’m not aware of any “all you can eat” option (but I’m not the hardcore gamer I used to be) so they do seem to have the content and the PoD aspect, but set me straight here if I’m missing something please.
MS did a smart thing in the 90s. They spent 5 mill to buy a java based gaming platform known as the zone and used that as the basis for their platform. I know, I was working for the company they didn’t decide to buy (DAMN!) known as TEN.
This is what has always been a problem for Sony through all their products. They are loath to go outside their own dev ecosystem to acquire technology.
I think steam was way ahead of its time with the distribution of games and MS was on that path but their message was poor resulting in a backtracking of policies. I have to say though, my internet connection is taking a butt kicking because of digital distribution (I only get 100GB per month).
I know nothing about an “All you can Eat” model from PS Now – Just that I wouldn’t be shocked to see it come out like that. What publisher wouldn’t love to make money off games that are 5+yrs old. As a publisher I’d love that influx of cash. It could even help to revive long forgotten franchises the same way Netflix did for Arrested Development and (rumored) Jericho.
I just hope that MS responds to this new service with something of their own. I’d love to play Jade Empire again and so would other people. Perhaps we could get a revival on that too (I tried a pre-alpha JE2 a few years back – it was cancelled).