In July, Sony began the open Beta of PlayStation Now, its cloud-based gaming service, allowing players to play games without ever physically downloading them: their button-presses would instead simply correspond to a Sony server, which would then relay the relevant action back to the user via the wonder of high-quality streaming video. It's an ambitious business model that met with mixed reviews upon release, praised for the technology itself (even with lag and dropped connections threatening the fun), while criticised heavily for the pricing structure, which in some cases would charge up to $4.99 for a mere 4 hours of "rental" time. This just doesn't make sense when, in many cases, journalists have noted that it would be cheaper to just procure the physical game from E-Bay. What PS Now needs to be is a Netflix-esque rental service, whereby a subscription fee allows access to certain tiers of content, with perhaps PS1 and PS2 archives costing a few more dollars or pounds per month to access. With the sheer breadth of material this would potentially provide access to, it would absolutely be worth the money. Of course, bandwidth is still an issue with some less-enlightened ISPs, but if Sony really wants this to work, they need to carve out a fair and level-headed pricing model which reflects how the modern world accesses content. The potential is absolutely insane, so hopefully they won't blow it with greed.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
