With PS Now, is Sony moving away from hardware?

I've seen speculation that Sony is using PS Now to transform PlayStation into a "software and services" brand. I've also heard similar things about Xbox.

If this is true then Nintendo will be the only one left making actual game consoles and handhelds. O_O

Who knows? We don't even know ifPS now will work that well. Not everyone has the best internet connection speed.

People don't have problems with Netflix or Hulu, no one complains about those services.

My internet speed is about 20MBs ($30 a month using DSL). I'm all set.

There are still many places in the world where your Netflix and Hulu are not accessible (at least not without workarounds. My country included). There are many parts of the world where internet is either too expensive, or seriously inadequate for such streaming services.

PS Now, for the time being, is purely back-catalog and will not be available in most countries for some quite some time. The hardware isn't going away any time soon. Streaming games is not going to replace the current conventional methods, but it will compliment them.

All the major publishers still rely heavily on physical retail too, so that's not going anywhere (yet). It may be a long time before AAA development to purely digital distribution could be consistently viable. As for purely streamed software however, I cannot fathom how that would ever support AAA development on it's own.

What about Steam? That service is all online and it replaced discs on PC. If it worked for PC games then it can work for consoles. Also, smartphones all use downloaded content.

It would be so much easier if all internet was wireless. Cellular providers could give us home WiFi and phone internet for one monthly fee.

And I hate it when people try to distinguish AAA games from everything else. Games are games, it doesn't matter who made them.

When the world has high speed internet and no data caps, then perhaps. When do you think that might be? 20 years? With games in excess of 40+GB(NBA 2K14, PS4 for example), how many games can one afford to play? I've played over 100 games on my PS3 thus far, I shudder to think of the damage that would have caused to my wallet had I downloaded them all. Here in Canada, I have a 300gb limit, I am lucky, but how many out there have 20-30gb/month? Tough ish for them I guess.

What services does PS offer that I can't get on my HTPC?

it seems like sony tries a little bit of everything just in case that's where the industry goes. they made the PS2 with online play as a side feature and never really jumped in all the way until that became the standard. the made a motion controller in case that became the standard and it doesn't seem like it will right now but they had their asses covered just in case. now they're doing the same thing with VR and streaming games.

Don't worry too much about this. The thing that holds back cloud gaming from taking over hardware is the bandwidth of sony's server and lots of countries have poor broadband. I live in Australia and I can barely get 1mb/s on my broadband right now. What also doesn't make sense is the profits the developers are going to make for their games especially AAA and sony will be losing lots of money and they will lose a huge amount of their fanbase to the point where they might end up bankrupt and having to sell off playstation. There is also no sense of ownership with streaming games towards consumers. So there are a lot of things holding cloud gaming back, for now in present day, and its not something easy to pull off. Time will tell.

Not everyone has a capable internet for a streaming service like this - including myself - the day these consoles go this route is the day I go 100% PC, I really hope this isn't the last generation of the home consoles. Dark times indeed.

Wait wait wait... People complain about slow internet speeds yet they play games on Steam, which requires an internet connection to download.

@tendoboy1984: How many people use Steam? I don't know the numbers. Is every person who owns a PS3/4 also using Steam? You are on a PS specific board and should expect people to talk about net speeds being an issue. If it comes down to needing a quality internet connection to play/download a game and not, I'll go with the later. I would posit most would also.

Don't be an idiot, Steam is a CHOICE. You can always still buy disc-based games from the store for your PC games. It's nice to have the choice of buying cheap games on Steam, or just going to the store if you don't have the internet to download them.

If this streaming service is the future of consoles, disc based games won't exist and you'll be forced to stream games which sucks balls.

It depends on how PlayStation Now ends up overtime, Sony cannot rely on PlayStation Now too much; if it is not doing well.

I'm not willing to spend a monthly fee for a PS3 game that I will limit to playing one or 2 a month anyways. It's not like I will be playing a different game each day to make it worth a subscription. I would rather invest in a used PS3 and buy cheap games that I can keep. Also I don't want to stream a game, by the time I finish it I would of used three times or more the download that I would of used once to download the game. It just seems like a huge gimmick they are hyping up.

This is bogus. I've been hearing the same thing all week. The original playstation sold over 100 million units, the PS2 over 150, and the PS3 is at around 80 and will still be going strong for another year or two, maybe more. There is no way in hell that Sony is going to ditch a business model where over 100 million units of a device are expected to be sold. They know, (or at least, I hope they do), that right now, switching to a completely digital platform would be a really bad idea since they wouldn't be able to penetrate the market enough. Even though we now have streaming services like Netflix, and everything seems to cloud-based now, it will still be years before video game streaming services will become highly marketable and or profitable- if they ever do.

Steam is a place to buy games from, you sign up, you download the game and it's yours you do not stream games from Steam.

lets just think about it, you get rid of physical disc's and it's all handled through Sony or Microsoft's stores online, this not only takes all your rights away of owning anything, you basically are paying just for a license to play the game, are you ready to give up all your rights, and come out of the gen without anything to your name, I mean I like looking back at my passed gaming adventures by looking at my collection and goin o man that was a great game and then popping it back in and playing, if we went all digital, in 2 more gen's your'll look back and remember them games and with no way of playing them again because your system has broke and or they have discontinued that service on that system. why would anyone want that. just because it's easier and were all getting lazy????

Cloud Gaming as it's called is a long long way off properly, the problem is Internet speeds are rubbish, Wireless is even worse, lets get you to an understanding, to send a single from your controller to the machine then across the internet to the cloud base gaming center and back again, there is always going to be a bit of lag nothing is that fast it can be instant, Sony will never delve into that business 100% for a long time, it isn't a proven method for main stream, plus many countries don't have that good of an internet.

Why would it be so much easier if it was all wireless??? you still need Aerials situated all around the world and it comes down to the countries electricity situation's it's not as simple as that and mobile broadband is good but it ain't that good.

hate all you want AAA games for me are amazing and I honestly cannot stand much else, games are games but people have taste, different tastes.

Taking a guess, I think we'll see at least one more Playstation hardware release from Sony (ps5?). After that, if PS Now does well then I could easily see Sony making the switch to a full time streaming service. A lot of the ISP's, at least in the US have the capability of giving better transfer speeds but choose to cap it. I don't think this gen will last as long as the previous gen so we could conceivably see new consoles in about 5 years. Add another 5 years to the "next gen" and by then streaming will be a legitimate option. All of that said, we're probably about 7 - 10 years from Sony or anyone else for that matter making this move full time imo.

i don't think they will, they are just making sure in having income in the future. Also they will release another console, but it's going to be cheaper and less powerful most likely. But we will continue to get hardware

Seeing as how you need Sony hardware to run PS Now, I don't see how they'd benefit from separating themselves from it. I know that they've talked about having some non-Sony devices being capable of using PS Now, but I think that Sony will be the ones offering the hardware for other companies to include in their t.v.'s, etc. Kind of like Nvidia and G-sync, Google and Chromecast, Amazon and Fire TV. It's their products being used on different compatible devices, whether by usb, ethernet connections and so on. And, just like Google, Amazon, Apple, Roku, etc, I think they're just expanding their method of getting their products out to more people as there is a heck of a lot of competition out there.

PlayStation Now could be cool if it is done right. If the rumored pictures of the pricing model are true, then it might not be that great. I do not like the idea of renting software on a game by game basis. I would rather have PS Now like PS Plus. I would rather pay a yearly fee to get access to as many previous generation titles as possible. I would rather pay $50 a year in addition to Plus instead of renting X game for $5 to play it for two weeks or something. The deal could be even better if Sony offered a discount on PS Now for those who have Plus. The company could say that PS Now is $50 without Plus, but both together is $80 a year. I doubt this scenario will take place. This probably will not replace hardware any time soon. This is more of an answer to backwards compatibility than it is to host brand new titles.

@joseph_mach: You can run it from a tablet, you don't need Sony hardware

Indeed. I know it'll run on tablets, but will it run on....wait for it... Sonly (Sony...only... >.< ) tablets? I know, I know...that was bad....

Anywho...I guess what I'm trying to say is that I imagine Sony will release a chipset, or other piece of hardware for tablets, tvs, phones, etc, which they are already doing that allows you to play older PS console games in some of their products right now. It'd be wiser for them to do so financially. I know there are ways to emulate consoles via software out there as all you have to do is look and see what's available out there for a pc. Which is why I think Sony would sell, lend, whatever the case would be some piece of tech that would allow them to run their software on their products and keep their hardware profitable. It is after all what Sony does. They sell hardware. I don't know that they'd ever go open source for their products. It'd be neat to see though. =)

They've been beta testing it & have improved the speeds a lot. So far it is working good.

It's not smart for them for the Tablet market, because they don't have a big share there. Also the mobiles aren't selling that well