PlayStation Now Open Beta – Our Journey Begins

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PlayStation Now Open Beta – Our Journey Begins

As we announced back at CES, PlayStation Now (PS Now) is the first-ever game streaming service available on a game console, where you can quickly access a rich and expanding library of PlayStation 3 (PS3) games from our cloud servers. Since January, PS Now has been in Private Beta for select gamers across the country, and I’m happy to announce that the Open Beta will be available to all PlayStation 4 (PS4) owners in the U.S. and Canada starting tomorrow.

As part of this Open Beta, PS4 users will see PS Now titles fully integrated into PlayStation Store, available to be streamed for various rental durations. Check out the video walkthrough of how it all works:

During the PS Now Open Beta, PS4 users will see a diverse library of more than 100 titles to rent, with more added regularly. PS Now will offer a variety of rental periods depending on the game, including 7-days, 30-days or 90-days, as well as a short 4-hour duration, so players can sample the experience first.

With a strong and stable broadband connection, visual and gameplay quality will be much like what you’re used to with other PS3 games. PS Now will also feature cloud game saves, as well as support for other popular network features such as Trophies, friend lists and leaderboards. You can also play seamlessly online with other people on PS Now, or even players who have the downloadable or disc based version of the game. As you know, the PS3 catalog of games is massive and incredibly diverse, and we’re thrilled to make these epic experiences available to PS4 first, followed by our other PlayStation platforms in the coming months.

Since we’re still in Beta, and in the very early days of PS Now, we plan to continue to collect feedback during this Open Beta phase to make further refinements to the service, so please provide us feedback once you’ve experienced the service.

We want to thank those that have been participating in the PS Now Private Beta for their time, dedication and valuable feedback, which have helped us continue to shape the service.

You will immediately see a clear breakdown of what’s included with game rentals, so it’s easier to tell what content you’re getting with your rental, especially since several games offered through PS Now include DLC that increase the value of the offering. Also, in a few weeks, you will start seeing reduced pricing on some 4-hour rentals which will appear at $1.99.

In addition, we’ve heard you loud and clear for an update on a PS Now subscription option and want to reassure you that we are working on it. We think PS Now represents the next step toward the future of gaming and we’re excited to have the PlayStation Nation come along with us on the beginning of this journey.

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771 Comments

4 Author Replies

  • 8. You should get a 50% (at least) credit back on your 4 hour rental if you rent the same game again with 24 hours of your rental expiring. So if I rent for 4 hours at $2.99 and like the game and decide to rent for 7 days at $5.99 (within 24 hours), I should get at least $1.49 credited back to my wallet.

    9. Not really necessary but would make for a cool perk, renting the sequel (or prequel) of a game within 24 hours could also provide you with a credit to your wallet similar to suggestion #8. Or perhaps offering bundle pricing for 30-day rentals (rent the Uncharted Trilogy for 30-days at 50% discount over renting all 3 individually).

    Could probably come up with countless other suggestions, but typing on an iPad is strenuous.

  • Honestly, I have to agree with most of the other commenters on PS Now. Most people have a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu that they subscribe to. The reason people subscribe is because of the amazing value proposition (8.99 for unlimited access to streaming thousands of movies and TV shows). This is the model most of us are used to, so it is not only imperative that you create a subscription-based model for Now, but the value proposition must be there. We can already pay 14.99/month for unlimited rentals through Gamefly; based on the convenience of Plus, Sony could probably get away with charging the same monthly charge…certainly no more than 20.00. And for the rentals, it’ll be hard to compete with Redbox charging $2/4 hours when Redbox charges the same amount for 24 hours. I look forward to seeing the service evolve over the course of time; as it currently stands, I can’t support it.

  • This looks really awesome. Can’t wait to play some PS3 titles on my PS4 tomorrow!

  • @102; ugh, gamefly won’t let you play PS3 games on PS4.

  • Is there a list of available games that Playstation Now will offer to the open beta on the first day and what games will be added soon?

  • I really like the PS Now service, used it a lot when I was in the closed beta but haven’t touched it when the prices came up and it cost the same to buy the thing as it would to rent it for 90 days. Not all the prices were crazy though.

    I had two suggestions in my beta comments I hope they listen to. First instead of 90 days you should have a permanent option, in other words, instead of charging someone $30 to rent a $30 game for 90 days, they just buy the rights to stream it.

    Also, games that have been bought digitally or that you have a disc for should be accessible for free. This would be a great way to provide a preview of the services to the consumers so they can try stuff on their PS4 that they bought on PS3 and realize how great the service is so they won’t be afraid to pay to use the service.

    Lastly, I’d pay for a new PS+ if it meant I had a Netflix-like subscription service in Now. I’m really excited for PS Now as my PS3 is dying and I’d love to move all my PS3 experiences to that awesome machine.

  • Yeah it’s expensive. I mean 2 bucks for 4 hours it’s like you’re forced to finish the game and not take your time. if we add up the amount of hours some games require then 2 bucks could easily become $20 for a single game.. with that I’m better off getting the used disc on amazon!
    I’ll take a look and appreciate the chance, but a subscription based model like said in the previous 102 comments is necessary for this to succeed. We already have trials and timed trials so it’s not even appealing to pay $2 just to “try” a game.

  • It’s great you guys are actually trying to make a service like this work, unfortunately, is not for me. I would recommend some kind of subscription model, just like Plus. I can only wish you guys the best of luck. I’m glad I still have my backwards compatible PS3 and PS4 :D

  • Almost forgot, i truly think you need to give everyone a 4 hour rental of their choice (or limited first-part choice) for free if you really want to see this take off. This is labelled as a Beta and people need to see that it works.

  • Sorry jack buser I’m not going to be paying for any of these 4hr 2$ rental , way overpriced and a big disappointment you took off ps 1&2 classic games.

  • Depending on the pricing, this has me very excited, and pretty optimistic about Sony’s vision for the PS4. I still have a PS3, but it’ll be pretty great to be able to play everything on all of my other systems and try out some games I may have missed. All considered, I think that Sony is handling backwards compatibility the right way.

    And maybe in the future, game streaming can be extended to PS4 games to contend with the likes of Redbox and Gamefly.

  • So is the beginning of the end of consoles? The future don’t look to bright if you can stream games from almost any device. Sure this is for older games that we have purchased before.
    Games that have been purchased from PS3 should be free for PSNow and future consoles (if anymore will be made). There is a record of purchase.
    If they keep PS4 games off of this PSNow, PS4 console might survive.

    To top it all off, no one will enjoy the storyline in the games, lot of people will skip the cut scenes cause it will burn up your time.

    And it should not be based on day/s, maybe hour/s? Say 1st option is 24 hours to use anytime.

    pricing plan sucks, realistically the pricing should be different from console games.
    PSOne games for 24 anytime hours should be $.50
    PS2 games for 24 anytime hours $.75
    PS3 games for 24 anytime hours $1.00
    And discounted for other pricing plans like…
    PSOne games for 48 anytime hours $.75 instead of a $1.00
    PS2 games for 48 anytime hours $1.25 instead of $1.50
    PS3 games for 48 anytime hours $1.75 instead of $2.00

  • I cant wait to try it. I hope they add games like Shadow of the Colossus HD, the Uncharted Series, and Red Dead Redemption.

  • This service is gonna be crap if we can’t use our current PS3 game saves, please tell me you guys are considering that ability, I speak for myself and all my friends when I say that if we can continue our progress on PS4 we will all buy PS4’s!!!

  • Will playstation now come out at midnight :D!?

  • … the pattern is every 24 anytime hours purchase, it knock off $.25

  • @96 you seem to have completely made up quotes from the gamespot article. I can’t find the term business sense anywhere in the article unless we’re reading different gamespot articles

    Here’s what i see:

    Fair enough, but how about the way Now will deal with users who own a supported game and would like to stream it to their PS4? “[We have] nothing to discuss at this time,” Buser says. “As I mentioned, we are going into open beta on PS4. It will be a rental offering, you’ll see a variety of different durations, and, again, a variety of different price points. You’ll see durations as short as four hours for an evening of fun–something where maybe you maybe want to come in and just check out a game–you’ll see longer durations, like 30 days, 90 days. And Robert talked a lot about the cloud save feature, where you can try out a game for a short duration, save your game to our cloud servers, decide you want to continue playing, rent for a longer duration, and pick up where you left off.

    So basically, this is a beta and we have nothing to announce about it at this time.

  • @112

    I assume when you say ‘anytime hours’ you mean ‘in-game hours’. If so, you’re nuts man! $1.00 for 24 in-game hours of a PS3 game? Most games are easily beatable in that time, so you’re essentially asking for $1.00 to play a game all the way through once. That’s not a realistic pricing structure at all.

  • They’ve said they’re working on a subscription plan, a la Netflix. Let’s not jump the gun and blame these guys just yet.

    Also, if the individual plans are unrealistic, they’ll realize when people are unwilling to pay those prices and they’ll change the pricing structure. SHOULD change them, anyway. They’re not *total* idiots.

  • nice but really over priced, cant u buy darksiders for less then the 90 days, and 3 bucks to play just 4 hours, thats a big no, a better option would be give an hour or two if you have psplus to try and if you like you can have th option to rent for a month or buy it forever like movies on playstation…

  • So, I have to pay. To participate. In a beta? That’s jacked up, right there.

  • My biggest problem with PS Now is that the prices are ridiculously high. If anything, they should be paying us to be beta testers. I’ve had the PS4 beta since early June, and from what I’ve seen, the service works extremely well, but once again – the pricing is horrible. If they keep the pricing that high when the beta testing is over, they are going to run PS Now into the ground before it even gets started.

  • 1) Are we going to get instant, streaming demos (instead of downloading them) on the PS Store for PS3 and PS4 through PS Now?
    2) Subscription model is needed. $7.99/month like Netflix would be good.
    3) There needs to be a buy and play through PS Now option. If you can rent for 90 days, you should be able to buy it and play whenever you want on any device.
    4) 4 hour rental should not be available. Minimum rental period should be 24 hours.
    5) Pricing for rentals should be appropriate (i.e. not be more than what it costs to buy the game in the store).

    When will we see PS Now on our smartphones, tablets, internet browsers, TV set top boxes and smart TV’s?
    PS1 to PS4 games on PS Now?
    Will trophies earned while playing through PS Now automatically sync?
    Voice chat when playing multiplayer through PS Now?

    To conclude, hope you guys execute on the pricing and bring as many games as possible to the service.

  • I know you’ve seen this comment many times, but please, _please_, open Vita beta soon. I think that will definitely be a game changer for me.

  • I thought this was going to be amazing, but this is the first major misstep Sony/Playstation has made in this new generation. The PS Now service is far from perfect but they are charging FAR too much. When you look at the new similar service from EA (which we are not going to get because Sony turned them down) that is by far the model I thought we would be getting – $5 or $10/month to play whatever we wanted out of the library available at the time. I hope this is what you are considering Sony, or possibly bundling it with the PS Plus membership (which would be even better) – but given the costs you have put out there I don’t think you’re going to have many takers.

    I hope someday, someone learns that you cannot charge the same price for digital games as you do for the physical copies. It doesn’t feel permanent, it isn’t “Mine” and I can’t do anything with it when I’m done. I’m okay with that trade-off if you would price things fairly. But WHY would I pay $30 to rent Deus Ex (for example) for 90 days when I could just purchase the ENTIRE GAME with add-ons used or EVEN NEW for less than that. It simply doesn’t make sense.

  • I made the switch to Playstation from XBOX with this generation after slowly coming to love my PS3 (though it never took the place of my 360). I went all in this time with Playstation and as pleased as I have been, PS Now feels like a slap in the face.

    I hope this gets cleared up and the prices come down. If I can help (I was an early beta tester and provided a LOT of feedback until you started the outrageous pricing) I would surely love to.

    PS – charging your customers, especially those loyal enough to beta test something for you – WHILE they are beta testing is just ridiculous. If you need to test out pricing, send me an email or a survey and I’ll tell you what I think. I hope your fans (like me) start speaking with their wallets.

  • Playstation Now seems like a crappy deal I kept my PS3 and i’ll just play them there to bad it isnt bundled or atleast discounted with my PS+ sub…

  • if it is in beta why do we have to pay it should be free. this should be a test to see if your server can hold all the people

  • Does SONY or anyone here know if old game saves will cross over or do we have to start from scratch?? Kind ah a big deal

  • I will never pay to play games for a certain amount of time! If I like the game enough to play it more than once, I will buy a hard copy or a digital copy if available. Support game developers for all the hard work they do!

    Just another way to suck money out of everyones wallet. Do the math folks = Common sense!!!

  • Playstation now beta for Ps4 for now anyway and people say they can buy the game cheaper. What will you play it with? Oh your PS3? So if you own a Ps3 why are you bothering to stream a game through the Internet at all then?

  • My 2 Cents from what I’ve witnessed with the Private Beta:

    – Was excited at the potential before Prices were put to games. After that lost 75% of my excitement.
    – Drop the 4 hour rental it’s worthless. 1 day rentals should be $2 to $4 tops. Otherwise Redbox is just down the street.
    – Prices in general are too high. Most 90 days were the same price as buying the game.
    – The way its set up now, I’ll hardly ever use it. Need a “netflix” like subscription option. Otherwise this makes Gamefly (even though you have to wait for a week sometimes to get games) look like a steal! I’d happily pay $20-$25 bucks a month for full access. Or even a cap of like 5 games “rented” a month.

  • overpriced ….

  • @118
    ok then, stick with the 24 hour from purchase time for $1.99.
    the way I was thinking was lets say you purchased 24 hour anytime option, you can keep that game for months if you want to. One day you might play for 2 hours, the next three days you don’t even get on, 5th day you play for 12 hours, 6th day you play for 10 hours. So it could take 6 days to play 24 hours. We spend the 24 hours anyway we want.

  • There should be something for people with PlayStation plus like the 4 hrs rental should be free

  • just rent the games out just like the movies on psn store… 3$ to 5 $ for a 24 hour period so user can use the game for a total of 24hours which would end after a 7 day period just like the movie rentals

  • My feedback just from what I know

    1. Make a subscription optional so you don’t have to pay hundreds of rental fees, maybe $100 a year or something like A Prime

    2. Give us the option to DL the games as long as our subcription for the year is paid, just like PS+ does will free to play. Would come in handy for military personnel that travel or don’t have internet 24/7

    3. Jack Buser, if you want this service to be kickass and make a ton of money, then please allow old games saves to cross over, this will promote the service more and will double if not triple PS4 sales, there are so many people like myself with a huge back log of PS3 games that want to upgrade to next gen but don’t want to risk having to lose our progress and start over, I know you said trophys cross over but what about old game saves currently in the PS+ cloud???

  • @134

    I could concede to something like this being realistic:

    10 hours in game time which must be used within 10 days for $1.99 or some other amount/timeframe/price combo. Essentially like buying pay-as-you-go cellphone minutes (in Canada at least). If your purchased in-game time expires after some reasonable amount of real-world time, it becomes reasonable again i think.

  • will this be implemented as a system update? if so, how soon will the roll out begin? 12 AM?

  • Can we play PS3 games on PS Now that we already own on PSN?

  • Glad that this is finally coming, I’ve always wanted something like this where you can rent video games online since N64…I just hope the pricing is reasonable.

  • You people are out of your minds thinking people will pay for 4 hour rentals at your absurd prices

  • As someone who has been in the private beta, I like how its coming along. The rental periods are almost perfect. Should be 24 hours/7 days/30 days/90 days. I don’t know where 4 hours came from, but that ridiculous. Pricing for rentals is fine. It seems all these youngens don’t remember what its like to RENT games from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Hell even a week of Redbox is $14. The purpose of renting a game is to play it once and be done with it. That being said, I do feel the service should expand the streaming to games owned, as well as those rented. For everyone who purchased PS3 games digitally to have those readily available on the PS4 to stream would be fantastic. As for the subscription model for PSNow, I like this too, to compliment individual rentals. Blockbuster was $20 a month for unlimited rentals and gamefly is $16 a month. Something along those lines would be favorable as well.

  • So you’re keeping the four hour option? I thought that just about every person had said that they’d rather have it just be a day? At the very least, it should’ve been a one-time only ‘Trial’ option to let people test the game. Even for only a couple of bucks, I just can’t see that option being viable.

  • As usual, Elvick is the only one who understands the scenario but she’s whistling in the wind here. PS Now allows you to play games on a different platform. Go ahead and rent from Gamefly or buy used from GameStop. You’ll still need a PS3 to play those games.

    Don’t have a PS3 and still want to play a PS3 game, like Demon’s Souls (someday?) on your PS4. Impossible. Unless you pay for Now. In the near future, I’ll pay whatever to play Skyrim on my Vita, via Now.

    You don’t want to pay Now to play a game you already have? Great, keep your PS3 and play it. Nobody is taking that license from you.

    This is just an additional option. I pre-ordered a PS TV in hopes of playing for the Persona 4G plat on my large screen, a most welcome option.

    I do agree that they need to modify their pricing structure but the beta results will impact that.

  • Here’s my feedback and i haven’t even played PS Now but for starters how about just have it too were you can play a 4 hour period for free on games and letting you purchase it if you want the game instead of a minor 90 day rental i understand the ieda of making money but come on Sony the monthy bill for this will be outrageous for parents and get me wrong I’m a loyal PlayStation guy been one since the mid 90’s but let’s get real a purchase over rental would be better as long as there not too high in price even a monthly price for the PS Now sub. Would be better than paying for a 90 day usage

  • If I pay for 4 hours, can I play an hour and then, go back to use my remaining 3 hours another day????

  • If I cannot use the remaining 3 hours on a different day, after only playing 1 hour, this would be a complete, and terrible rip-off? <– My feedback, hope you take it.

  • What if you have psn plus… Will it be free and/or a discojnted cost or a whole separate subscription fee?

  • The prices are crazy and this is built to fail at it’s current rate. This is kind of insulting to the consumer.

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