PlayStation Now, Sony's new cloud-based game-streaming service, will begin streaming PlayStation 3 games later this year, but someday original PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and even PlayStation 4 games will also be supported, Sony says. As long as your internet bandwidth is up to the task — Sony recommends a 5 Mb/second minimum — you'll be able to partake in a potentially massive library of playable, streaming-on-demand PlayStation games.
Sony's new PlayStation Now game streaming service is playable at CES 2014 this week, where the company also held a private event at which Polygon got a closer look at how game-streaming will work on PlayStation and non-PlayStation devices.
The environment in which we played won't be identical to real-world situations; PlayStation Now servers — built upon existing PS3 hardware — were just feet away from the PlayStation Vita and Bravia TV on which we played streaming versions of games like The Last of Us and God of War: Ascension. In the hands-on video above, you can see for yourself how PlayStation Now performs before it goes into a wider beta later this month.
In an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment vice president of marketing John Koller, we learned more about the roll out of PlayStation Now, including its forthcoming beta, the company's thoughts on how much to charge for PS Now subscriptions and why Sony is focusing first on bringing PlayStation 3 games to the service.
"We've come to a point where we feel very comfortable with the technology in terms of the latency and the types of games that are playable [through PlayStation Now]," Koller told Polygon. "PlayStation 3 is the tip of our spear in terms of software because we believe it's still very current and has the largest library.
"The goal is trying to get a wide variety of quality and quantity of types of games," Koller said, including some titles that are no longer at retail.
Watch the video above for more from our interview with Koller and Don Mesa, director of product planning and platform software innovation at SCEA, as well as hands-on gameplay.
