Playstation now cost10/4/2023 So the $60 you would normally spend on a new AAA game would now translate into 60 hours of title-agnostic streaming gameplay. Let's average that out to $1/hour and translate it into the metered credit scheme. Advertisementīased on the current leaks, Sony is charging between $3 and $5 for four hours of gameplay on PlayStation Now. Credits would only be spent when you're actively playing a game, meaning you don't have to worry about "wasting" a paid rental period by enjoying some other form of entertainment (or, you know, going to work). Players could buy packs of "PS Now credit" that could be used on any game in the library at any point. If Sony is wedded to the idea of charging for individual rentals on PlayStation Now (rather than full-access subscriptions or some sort of licensed streaming "ownership" system), it should leverage the power of the Internet and charge based on play time, not real time. In the digital realm, artificially limiting streaming game rentals in real time makes no sense except as an artifact of that bygone era. This may not be a huge deal if you've bought a seven-day rental of a game that can be finished in ten hours, but if you are grinding your way through an epic game in a short time period, renting makes the experience feel like a job with a tight deadline.īack in the days of brick-and-mortar rental stores, this was pretty much the only workable system, since you eventually had to return the game so somebody else could rent it (though even Blockbuster experimented with an odd "no late fees" structure near the end of its life). If you get home from work and feel like doing something else with your entertainment free time-watch a movie, read a book, take a bath, whatever-you're essentially wasting the limited amount of time you have to enjoy your rental. The problem with time-limited game rentals, in general, is that they come with a built-in pressure for players to maximize their value by playing the game as much as possible in that limited time period. For most games, a four-hour rental is no better than a demo, and in a day and age where publishers are giving away unrestricted 48-hour demos of complete games for free, charging for such a demo is a non-starter. In general, there are very few games that can be fully appreciated in a mere four hours these days, and the ones that can are generally sold new for less-than-premium prices. While you'd be able to get the complete movie experience in a time window that short, you'd only be done with about 1/7th of the "main story" in Final Fantasy XIII-2 during a rental of the same time. A paid, four-hour rental for a game like Final Fantasy XIII-2 is not the same type of entertainment unit as a $5 rental for an HD iTunes movie. With a rented movie or TV show, you can be relatively sure you'll be done with the experience when you've watched it once in the 24-hour rental period (or, if it's the kind of work you expect to watch multiple times, you can buy it). That's because these forms of entertainment are offered as discrete entertainment units of anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, comprising a more-or-less self-contained story. Time-limited rentals for downloaded and/or streamed content can work quite well for TV shows and movies, as iTunes and similar services have shown. Looking at PlayStation Now pricing as it currently stands, though, we're beginning to think that the problem isn't the prices themselves but the whole idea of renting out streaming games for limited real-world time spans. That would seem much easier to stomach than à la carte streaming game rentals, depending on the specific price Sony charges. It's also important to note that Sony has mentioned some sort of subscription plan for PlayStation Now, which would presumably provide Netflix-style all-you-could-play access for some sort of monthly fee. It's important to note that these prices aren't final and could easily change by the time PS Now launches in open beta or afterward. A game like Guacamelee costs $15 for either a 90-day rental or a full download on PSN. The prices are, as Kotaku bluntly put it, "currently insane." Sony is charging up to $5 for a four-hour rental period and up to $30 for 90 days of access to a game like Final Fantasy XIII-2, a game that sells new for roughly half that price on disc. The service is in closed beta right now, though, and Sony's initial pricing experiments for the service have begun to leak out. Further Reading For PlayStation Now streaming, the devil’s in the unknown detailsSony's PlayStation Now service, which will start by letting players stream a selection of PlayStation 3 games on their PlayStation 4, won't be in open beta until the end of July.
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