By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Could Sony be making changes to their online service that would lead to the combination of PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now?
Right now, it’s just rumor – Sony haven’t released any official statements – but reports of recent billing statements could indicate the announcement is coming. It would be a smart move for Sony, who has been reaching out more and more to gamers on PC and other platforms. It could also be a move toward a console free, or at least a more console neutral, gaming environment.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “those are all English words, Jeremy, and I understand what they all mean, but you might as well have just chiseled that in Sumerian cuneiform,” let me explain a bit more.
The two biggest players in the console gaming space for the past several decades have been Microsoft, with their Xbox systems, and Sony, with their PlayStation consoles. Sure, there is Nintendo too, and they have a solid business. But they haven’t gotten as many of the big, third-party titles over the same time period. Nintendo didn’t bet on online gaming the way Sony and Microsoft did, and the main reason to pick up their consoles are their first-party titles.
No one buys a Nintendo to play Destiny, Call of Duty, or Battlefield. You buy a Nintendo to play the latest Mario or Zelda game.
But with online gaming came a need for server space, and stable networks. With that came costs, but also another potential revenue stream; one that Microsoft and Sony have both pursued with gusto.
It started with Xbox Live, a service you had to subscribe to in order to play online games on the Xbox console. Along with that was Xbox Live Arcade, where you could purchase and download digital games. When the next generation of consoles rolled around, Microsoft launched Xbox Live Gold for the Xbox 360, a service that gave subscribers access to a library of downloadable games along with their online gaming access. Sony, who provided online gaming access through their PlayStation Network, decided to add PlayStation Plus. PlayStation Plus subscriptions were required to play online, beginning with the PlayStation 3 console – a direct competitor of the Xbox 360 and, like the Microsoft console, built for online play. But there were some differences. Where Xbox Live Gold games claimed while a subscriber were part of the gamers library forever, the Sony games were only available for as long as you were a subscriber. Both had to be claimed before they expired each month, but then one was yours forever – or at least as long as the service lasted, while the other was more of a rental.
When questions of backwards compatibility between PS3 and the PS4 arose, Sony announced a new service; PlayStation Now. The service, which allowed you to stream and, in some instances, download games was announced partly as the answer to backward compatibility. When PS2 backwards compatibility was dropped from the PS3 – because of differences between the lasers used to read the two different disc formats and associated cost – Sony took some heat. They introduced PS Now to PS Plus subscribers at the end of the PS3 life cycle, with the indication that PS Now would allow you to play these titles you already purchased. It was rumored that this backwards compatibility feature might even allow you to use your existing PS3 discs to simply validate that you owned a game, which you could then stream, bypassing any need for emulation or other technical issues.
Instead, what PS Now became was a separate subscription service – a sort of Netflix of PlayStation titles – that you could subscribe to in addition to PS Plus, if you still wanted to play online, or instead of PS Plus if you didn’t care about online play.
At the same time Microsoft has been pursuing a wide ranging, and confusing, variety of Xbox subscription options that offer downloadable and streaming games across their various consoles and on home PCs, or both. But while it’s subscription options can be confusing, Microsoft’s cross-play features, which allow PC gamers and console gamers to play together, or to play the same game on their laptop PC or from the couch on the console, have been popular. (Popular doesn’t mean without controversy, as some console players complain about the ubiquity of mods and cheats from their opponents on PC.)
But while Microsoft, who also has a vested interest in the PC market, has always been more open about merging those worlds, Sony’s console exclusivity has been both a hindrance and a selling point. While most Xbox exclusives, or games not released on Sony consoles, eventually showed up on PC, most Sony exclusives did not. The only way to play those games was to own a PlayStation. This, for some gamers, was a reason to choose Sony over Microsoft for the home console, especially if they also played games on the PC.
In recent years, though, Sony has started flirting more with PC gamers. They promised some cross-play with Portal 2, packaging a Steam code with disc copies of the game, though it never materialized. They’ve also started releasing a select few of their previous console exclusives, like God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn, for PC after limited console exclusivity.
They’ve also allowed PS Now subscribers to stream titles from that catalog on their PC machines, giving gamers another incentive to pay extra for that service.
Both Sony and Microsoft – who recognized the importance the internet would play in the future of gaming from the outset – have also realized that the future of gaming is not in hardware, it’s in streaming and access to game catalogs. Like it or not, the future of gaming looks a lot more like Netflix than your old Nintendo GameCube.
If the rumors are true, Sony is going all in on the streaming side and making PlayStation Now an integrated part of their PS Plus service, rather than a separate stand-alone service. This not only means all Plus subscribers could soon have access to that streaming catalog, on their PCs as well as their consoles, if existing Now subscribers are converted to Plus, they could start playing online with their friends. For subscribers to both services it could mean a small savings on their yearly or monthly subscriptions.
It could also mean the PlayStation 6 could save a lot of money on hardware by skipping discs altogether, and offer a variety of hard drive sizes instead for local downloads and faster loading times. Microsoft already offers disc-free, download only versions of their latest Xbox consoles. But with a focus on streaming, which is where it looks like gaming is going, console manufacturers could save even more on hardware, while also maintaining even tighter control on their IPs.
It might not be ideal for all gamers – for instance what do you do if the internet is down? – and it raises serious questions about the ownership of titles that gamers pay for, and continued access to those titles. But these have been issues gamers have had to content with since the beginning of digital downloads and associated digital rights management from content publishers. And, despite the problems, gamers seem to have embraced an online, digital ecosystem. In that ecosystem, streaming is the next logical step; even if it raises as many issues as it addresses. If Sony is making that bet, as it appears they are, it’s a smart one.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
