Sony is finally ready to start rolling out its streaming gaming service it announced last year. The company announced its PlayStation Now service, which will use technology it purchased from Gaikai to stream games to its own consoles (PlayStation 4/3/Vita), televisions, tablets, and smartphones.
Cloud gaming is nothing new, with OnLive popularizing the technology until it was faced with bankruptcy in 2012. Streaming games will require low latency internet and moderately quick internet connections to make sure there’s no lag with input controls. Milliseconds of lag could kill the gaming experience so it’ll be interesting to see how Sony tackles the challenges of streaming games.
Streaming games also offers the distinct advantage of running on low powered hardware since games will be rendered on Sony’s servers. Devices like tablets and phones will only have to display the video stream, which isn’t very hard since most devices support streaming HD video from Netflix.
PlayStation Now should be a success if it can pull off being on as many platforms as possible, not just Sony’s PlayStation ecosystem. Polygon reports Sony intends on bringing PlayStation Now to non-Sony devices but will focus on rolling out the service to Sony devices first.
PlayStation Now will launch in a closed beta at the end of this month with plans to roll out the service summer of 2014. At the moment, only four PlayStation 3 games are playable using PlayStation Now, including The Last of Us, God of War: ascension, Beyond: Two Souls, and Puppeteer.
