What exactly is Playstation Now?

It's several things at once. It's an emulator service and a rental service. With PS Now you will be able to play older titles from the entire PS library. There will be a subscription for it, i am guessing around 60 bucks a year. That's all we really know

No

It's a rental service, each game offered will have different rates for a different period of time it's rented.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/playstation-now-will-offer-netflix-like-subscription-options/1100-6417035/

Will see what happens.. I'm in the beta and it works just fine, I just imagine it will be very rarely when I'll want to play a game on PS Now.. I pretty much played everything I wanted to play that came out on the PS3 and PS1.. And no real interest in revisiting PS2 games.. The ones I would want to already have HD remasters I own.

uhm yes it is mate

Honestly, I have no interest in paying for another subscription on top of PS+, which I already have gained and played through a decent catalog of games from. I'd rather continue to focus on that. It will take a lot to get me to subscribe to PS Now. The rental portion of it has me interested, though. I doubt the pricing will be that great, but the convenience of it will be tempting. But I'll probably end up continuing to use GameFly whenever I feel the need to rent some games.

I'm a bit confused. Your title mentions PSNow, but you ask about PS+ in your message.

PS+ is the paid level of the PS network. It brings things like cloud saves, beta access, special sales, automatic updates, ps4 online multiplayer, and 2 games per month each to the PS3, PS4, and Vita. Costs $50 a year. IMO it's one of the better deals in gaming today, especially if you own more than one of the systems they give away games for.

PSNow is an upcoming game streaming service currently in beta. As it stands it is set to deliver a selection of PS3 games to the PS3, PS4, and Vita by streaming them to your console, similar to the OnLive service (if you remember that one). Eventually they plan to support the service not only on those Sony platforms, but also on smartphones, tablets, and some Sony smart TVs. They have only mentioned plans thus far to deliver PS3 games. Right now they are playing around with different rental prices and periods, though final pricing will be determined by each participating publisher. Sony has also promised a flat fee option to access at least a sub section of available titles. While the technology behind it is pretty good, you're going to deal with bandwith limitations and inherent lag, so there are downsides and certain genres probably wouldn't be enjoyable. To me, this is a very niche product at best.

Thank you for the explanation.I understand it a little bit better now. I just recently got a PS3, as an unexpected gift, after 5 years away from any real console. I moved countries and all I had to keep me "entertained" was my old PSP, which died 2 years ago.... I have some PS3 games back at home that I could pick up when visiting my parents this Xmass, but so many things happened this 5 years... I feel I missed an entire generation...

I was saving up for the PS4 and PSVita bundle, so I don't know if I will keep the PS3 or not yet, but reading a bit about the systems, it looks like PS4 is not compatible with PS3 games unless a future patch will fix that. Right now, PSNow looks to be their answer, which might not be good for me, as streaming is almost impossible with my connextion. So keeping the PS3 might not be a bad idea.

But I have a lot of questions about both PS+ and PSNow, digital games and how they work with the systems. Is there a thread you can direct me for further information?

Thanks!

Yeah, PS3 backwards compatibility won't be possible on the PS4, so PSNow is what they are proposing in its place. So if streaming games isn't for you (and for many it isn't) then you might want to hang on to the PS3.

I don't know of any authoritative threads here on the subjects, but you might wanna check out the Wikipedia articles on them (PS+ and PSNow), or go to sony's own sites (PS+ and PSNow) to get a good base of information, and if you have further questions you can always post in this forum and someone should know the answer.

Best of luck!