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PlayStation Gets Serious About Game Streaming, Cuts PS Now Prices
Sony is reducing the price of its streaming game subscription service, PlayStation Now, effective immediately for all new and existing subscribers. The service was an early entry into this game streaming and subscription fields, and the price cut may be a reaction to the recent explosion of similar services - most at a price point around PS Now’s new price.
The first real competitor to PS Now came in 2017 with Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, which gives subscribers access to a large library of games including some major titles, like Gears 5, which came to the service on release day. A crucial difference is that Xbox Game Pass requires players to download games, rather than streaming them. The upcoming Project xCloud will offer streaming Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, though pricing hasn’t been announced. Google Stadia will offer a streaming subscription service with access to a monthly library of games for $9.99 per month and the ability to purchase individual games. PS Now is also getting unlikely competition from mobile platforms, with the recently announced Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass, which bring unlimited game subscriptions to iOS and Android respectively for $4.99 per month.
Today’s price reveal on the PlayStation Blog shows a single month of PS Now dropping to $9.99 per month, the same price as Google Stadia. That’s half the price of a single month of the service before the announcement. Longer subscriptions offer more of a discount, with a year-long subscription costing only $4.99 per month.
Along with the price drop, Sony announced some blockbuster additions to the PS Now library: God of War, Grand Theft Auto V, Infamous: Second Son, and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. They’ll be available now through the beginning of January, when they’ll be removed as part of the service’s regular rotating library. That may be even bigger news for PC players and PS4 players, since PS Now also allows streaming to PC, making it the only way to play console hits like God of War on that platform.
PlayStation Now may have once been able to bank on being the only service of its kind, but now that it’s getting some major competition, a price drop makes a lot of sense. While streaming subscription providers are still pushing the novelty of streaming as a selling point, it’s not likely to remain exciting for consumers for long, aside from the fact that it allows them to play games without dedicated hardware. The company most likely to win the battle of the subscription services is the one with the best library, which could help to explain the recent spate of studio acquisitions by Microsoft and Sony, including Sony buying Spider-Man developer Insomniac. A possible downside for players, though, is that competition for exclusives could lead to even more fragmented game libraries as platform holders try to differentiate themselves and stall progress on initiatives like crossplay and the reduction of console-exclusive content for cross-platform games.
