6 Ways PlayStation Now Can Be a Success

PlayStation Now impressed a lot of people when Andrew House officially revealed it on this year’s CES. While a lot us knew that Gaikai was intended for streaming old games, it was a nice surprise to hear that you do not need a console to stream these games. You can play games on a mobile phone, tablet, and on Sony Bravia televisions. Pretty soon they’ll be rolling the service out to non-Sony devices. It’s an excellent move to market PlayStation services to the mainstream market.

The company also recommended users to have a 5Mbps connection if they intend to use the service. For Americans, this is certainly above the average internet speed for most states in the nation. Third world countries still need to catch up, but I predict that they can accommodate PlayStation Now when Sony decides to roll the service out to other countries.

So, what steps can Sony take to make its new service a success? Read on for more.

1.Have an extensive line-up of third party games

I already know that it’s quite difficult to get all of third party developers to sign up for PlayStation Now. It would be nice, but we don’t need all the games out there. We just need an extensive and diverse line-up of games. Cover most of the genres and get enough games for us to play. While I might consider it even if it’s only PlayStation titles, it’ll be a lot more appealing if it featured third party titles as well.

2. Implement a good “save” system

It would really suck if I would lose my progress in a game just because my Internet crapped out. Sure, we face this similar problem when games freeze but it’s only an occasional occurrence (at least for me). The Internet could crap out probably way more often. Hopefully, the service will just pick up where I left off or on the most recent checkpoint at least.

3. PlayStation Plus members get it for free

You know what would really beat Xbox Live’s premium subscription? Sony offering PlayStation Now subscription as a part of the benefits of being a PS Plus member. PS Plus used to have the leg up with their monthly free games, but Xbox Games with Gold caught up with it. So, they can stay ahead of the pack by offering this to their subscribers. If they can’t do that, offer it to PS Plus members at a discounted price at the very least.

4.Don’t Release PS4 Games

Yes, you heard me. No PlayStation 4 games for the PlayStation Now service even if it was possible. You might think of it as an anti-consumer sentiment, but it benefits us in the long run. I believe that if they roll out PS4 games for the service then it will effectively harm sales for the newly released console. I think it’s a good idea that it is only for games in the past generations. It carves space for the PS4 and there are potentially more than enough titles available for PlayStation Now to stand on its own.  

5. PS Classics Should Already Be a Part of It

I’m not that familiar with licensing, but shouldn’t third party PS1 and PS2 games automatically be part of PlayStation Now if they are already available on the PS Store? That would be extremely cool if that were the case instead of having to wait for FF8 and Crash Bandicoot to be available all over again.

6.Power of the Cloud

I think it would really be great if gamers could share save files among various devices. For example, I started to play Grand Theft Auto V on my TV. I sure hope that I can continue playing on my mobile device too similar to how Netflix can remember where you left off even when you switch device.