PlayStation Now is a cloud gaming service that lets both PS4 and PC users play a multiple of titles ranging from the PS2 days to Sony’s current-gen PS4 console. It was released in 2014 after Sony acquired Gaikai in mid-2012 and is one of the oldest services of that era still around. In 2015 Sony also purchased OnLive and effectively had a monopoly in the game streaming market throughout much of the rest of that decade. They lulled about after that, not improving or making use of their position. Once we were able to access PS Now from the Vita, PS3, Blu-ray players, and even certain smart TVs. And now we are limited to PC and PS4.
Fast forward to late 2019 as other large companies really started making waves in the cloud gaming world and Sony was given quite the sudden, yet completely predictable wake-up call. They quickly lowered the prices from $99 with a yearly commitment to just $60, while monthly plans where halved from $20 to $10. On top of that, they started offering big named titles like GTA V and the new God of War game on their PS Now service. That was a step in the right direction certainly, but they have fallen far behind in terms of streaming tech and infrastructure. And those big-name titles? They are only available for three months at a time before they are swapped out for something else, which is not all that great.
Previously, most of the games were quite old and usually under the radar type releases. Not a bad thing by any means, though likely wouldn’t do much to pull in the mainstream gamers. These titles remain and are always available to play, unlike the bigger, newer games. There are over 800 of them to choose from, which is a mind-boggling amount and is what gives this service value to the PC gamer. PS4 users can download both PS4 and PS2 titles to play them natively on their hardware, while we PC peeps can only stream them. That is where Sony’s complacence comes back to bite this service in the rear end. It very much feels like a cloud service from the early 10’s.
The maximum resolution you can stream a game at is 720p, making modern titles look terrible. That is before we bring into account how significantly the visual quality is impacted compared to using native hardware at the same res. Image artifacting is very apparent, even on a still image. The screen has this soft look that nearly reminds me of the VHS era. The truly strange thing here is that they purchased OnLive’s patents, who by the end of that companies life was streaming at 1080p with far better quality. What has Sony been doing with their PS Now these past five years? Well the ability to download to PS4 was added in late 2018 and European servers were expanded upon during 2019. Aside from that, seemingly not much to the underlying service itself from what I’ve seen.
I honestly don’t mind bad graphics. What matters is the gameplay in my books. Unfortunately, PS Now falls far behind its competition in this regard as well. I measured the input delay at 0.4 of a second at best and 0.6 at worst. That may not sound like much but will impact you quite a bit when playing fast-paced games. Part of this will have to do with the titles themselves. If they are running at 30fps instead of 60, it will simply have more delay to your inputs. The other aspect to latency is how close to the server you are. Sony does not state where their servers are located to my knowledge. I do not know how far away from one I am, so I can only speak from my experience. A plus for this service is that they do offer 7 day free trials so you can try it out beforehand.
This review has felt like I’ve done nothing but bash PS Now. That is not my intent, though I am unfortunately not done. We just talked about latency, which brings me to the fact that you require a PS4 controller to play PS4 games. Older console titles usually work on different controllers, yet the PS4 ones requires you to either directly connect via USB or to buy a specific Bluetooth adapter for its controller. The problem here is that Sony has long stopped making those and you will need to pay an absurd amount to buy one off a scalper if you want to play wirelessly on the PC. Due to that, I choose the wired route. Despite being connected directly to my PC, which in turn has a direct Ethernet internet connection, the input delays were far worse than most other services. I fully understand why they didn’t bother making an app for smartphones that would rely on wireless connections.
Let’s talk about the UI, shall we? It is not bad looking at all. It has a sleek, stylish look and separates its titles into various genres, as well as shows you their recently added games. The issue lies with its functionality. There is no search bar. In order to find out whether a title is on there or not, you will have to scroll down to the first letter of its name, then further scroll right until you hopefully find it. Remember, there are over 800 games available. After you find it, you can then add it to your ‘My List’ for easier access. It will also show up in your play history if you forget to do so, for future easy access.
In a truly bizarre move, using the UI with the controller and mouse is not as easy as you may assume. You either use one or the other. It defaults to using the mouse and you then have to manually set it to use your controller every time you boot the PS Now app up. That can quickly prove to be annoying. If you plan to use it on your TV via the PC, be sure to keep a wireless mouse handy. Especially given that you need it to set it to controller mode in the first place. A strangely hidden option is the ability to optimize both app performance and upscaling your stream using your GPU. To do this, click on the taskbar’s upward arrow that hides all active programs, right-click on the Now app, and pick Graphics Settings. Meanwhile, accessing the settings icon in the app itself gives you nothing but the Health & Terms and the Privacy Policy. ..Why Sony?
It is suggested that you have at least a 5mbps internet connection to use this service. That makes it significantly less demanding than competitors that require a minimum of 10mbps such as Stadia or the upcoming xCloud. I can not tell you how well it works when using internet that slow, sadly. What I can tell you is that ignoring the terrible graphical quality and high input delay, it is rather stable at least. I’ve never lost connection and minus the stuttering that would natively occur in a game using actual hardware, it very rarely stuttered on account of being streamed. Playing titles is doable and actually not that bad once you adjust yourself to the latency. With that price drop, it helps to make one’s opinion lean more to the ‘you get what you pay for’ rather than the ‘this is a ripoff’ camp.
That brings me full circle to the games. You have over 800 of them to choose from, all preloaded, meaning you just click and play without having to download either it or its updates. Depending on the popularity of the title, you may have to wait a bit before a machine frees up and you can play. In my six years of using this service on and off, I can’t recall ever having to wait over a minute. There are a ton of titles that have never made their way over to the PC. Bloodborne, The Darkness 1, Uncharted, and Eternal Sonata, to name just a few. There are a ton of exclusives to experience that would otherwise require us PC gamers to (legally) use emulation. That not only requires some decently powerful hardware to achieve well, yet may also contain unintended glitches due to the fan-made reverse engineering.
Buying the actual consoles is another option, but not ideal either. Up to the launch PS3, there was backward compatibility for every Sony console. As appreciated as it was, it was not perfect. Some PS1 games had issues on the PS2 for instance. Same for some of the PS2 titles on PS3 before they got rid of compatibility completely with future revisions. All that is before buying any actual software that may have only gone up in value over the years as retro gaming is quite big now, and there are only so many copies to go around. This is where a service like PS Now starts making sense. Sure you don’t have access to every game released as you would with an actual console, but you also don’t need to make room for multiple devices you may only rarely ever use for its exclusives and clog up your TV’s HDMI or composite ports.
What a shame that the service is so sub-par then, from the issues I’ve previously mentioned, to being flat out kicked out of a game if you have 10 minutes of inactivity. That could really set you back if you didn’t save recently. Another massive omission is the inability to acquire or purchase DLC for a title. If the game doesn’t come with it, you are out of luck. Playstation Now, in my opinion, barely borders on usable. The only thing really saving it is the low price and its massive game library that you will not get through any time soon, even if you only play titles not officially released on PC. In an interesting twist, Sony teamed up with Microsoft to use their Azure cloud data centers. That certainly got me excited at this service’s future and proves that Sony is now seeing cloud gaming as more than a side project as it has for the past half-decade. What’s on offer is nothing to write home about, but what they can offer is definitely not something to scoff at.
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