Playstation 4 Adds Backwards Compatibility with Playstation Now

January 12, 2014

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Ashley Crocker ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Staff

On January 8, Playstation announced the Playstation Now, a streaming service that allows subscribed members stream titles across Playstation platforms including The PS 1-4, Vita, mobile devices and the Sony Bravia television. The service will be tested using the games The Last of Us and Beyond Two Souls. Sony announced that a closed beta test of the system would begin in January while the full scale network is set to open Summer 2014.

What does this mean for gamers? Well, it looks as if the console gaming world is finally catching up with other media worlds. Services like Netflix have been successfully providing access to large video libraries across platforms for several years. But Video Games are a lot more complex than streaming a television show.

What Playstation did not address is the issues of streaming including lag and video quality. It will be interesting to see if Sony will be able to successfully launch this system. Hopefully they will because it would effectively eliminate the issues of backwards compatibility for a small price. However game retailers such as GameStop are put at risk by this technology as they thrive on selling many old titles and hardware that is no longer sold by the gaming companies. But as PC gaming has shown us for years, digital retail is marginally cheaper and unlike a scratched Xbox game, your game is perfect forever. If done well, Sony may just be on to something. The future of video game distribution perhaps?