PSNow Failure

Despite the initial praising of PSNow dominating GamePass a few years ago(pre pandemic) , PSNow growth stagnated while GamePass soared. GamePass was able to kill the service in about 3 years by forcing Sony to rebrand the service and hide a repackaged version within a 3 tiered service. It was able accumulate 8 times more users than PSNow. Let us not forget that GamePass was the unsustainable service. While, for unknown reasons😉, this concern didn't apply to PSNow but PSNow was the service that was killed.😮

Do you think this new strategy will work? Or would Sony rely on PS+ basic to hide the numbers? Or would the breakdown of numbers won't matter to the concerned gamer...s?😏

We all know you are still on the Stadia bus...

@BassMan: Strange, I never bought Stadia and last I check it is still alive. But, don't let me stop your baseless deflection.

BTW, when is game streaming going to die again?😂

The call of the brigade has been triggered. lol

Perhaps a good time for MS to just buy Phony, put'em out of their misery and unify under the Xbox brand. :P

Wouldn't that be "bassless"

Stadia is pretty much dead, but I never said streaming was going to die as a whole. I just said it was shit. Seems to still be the general consensus at this point. You must have got on the Stadia bus drunk and passed out. You keep missing your stop. LOL

Is it dead if it still exists? 🤷‍♂️

Pricing is the same and it offers more in the 3 tier system……soooooo, everyone wins?

I would hardly call gamepass soaring in fairness. It was released in 2017 and (after a quick look) seems to have around 25million subscribers now. That's not great to be honest considering it can be accessed by a lot of devices.

They are also missing growth targets while operating in ideal global conditions for rabid growth for such a service (Covid).

https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-game-pass-subscriber-numbers-grow-but-miss-goal

For all MSs gloating around gamepass, this is not brilliant performance to be honest. By end of gen it would want to have 125+ million subscribers or some very uncomfortable questions are going to be asked i suspect.

As for PSNow. Going by sonys approach with the rebrand, they seem to be reluctant to go all in on subs so are just doing the minimum. Given what i can dig up on gamepass: sonys approach could be correct. They may never get the sub numbers of gamepass for the new PS Now but the PS division as a whole could be healthier.

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. For the record: i don't subscribe to any of them.

All I know is I bought PS Now for dirt cheap for a year and I'll be getting Sony's next shitty subscription service for free with it.

Not a bad price to check out the new scheme.

@BassMan: You really trying your best to associate me with Stadia when I pro streaming, the thing you stated would be dead but isn't. Must be really annoying facing that reality.

This rebrand of PSNow to compete with Game Pass feels like a half measure. I can see it doing a bit better then previously but I can’t see it doing as well as GP without them putting their first party titles up day one.

@Ibacai: It is being phased out so, PSNow is dead.

Imagine streaming titles in 720p... and they're charging money for that.🤡

Want to talk about hiding things Pedro? Where are those Xbox One or Series sales numbers? Basement dwellers are worried about the wrong things as usual.

Sony is such a trash company. All they do is copy other companies.

RIP PSNow :(

@Pedro: Stadia was a bust...

@mesome713: better than Xbox considering the libraries over the years. Sorry.

PSNow was a half assed attempt from the beginning. Then once they allowed subscribers to download the games to their consoles, many folks were never aware of the change. (I think a user in this very thread still believes the games are streaming only) PlayStation never put any effort into the marketing of PSNow. It’s almost like the only wanted to make it visible enough for those who were looking for it to find it, while keeping it out of sight from the average PS consumer. Game Pass on the other hand, has been brilliantly marketed right from the jump. It’s EVERYWHERE. At one point, my 68 year old mom was getting Game Pass codes from her normal store purchases. Say what you want about the 25 million GP subs after 5 years. Xbox has put in the effort to help the service succeed

With PS going after folks stacking their subscriptions before the launch of the new program, it’s clear PS is still putting the revenue over the “consumer friendliness“ of the rebrand. That tells you where their heads are at. This rebrand is already looking “doomed” imo. But looking at how well PS games are still selling, PS may have no interest in the new PS+ succeeding.

@BassMan: Still trying and failing 😂🤣

And a bunch of those games Sony has censored the artists art. Sony and PSNow can go f themselves. Worst company in the business.

actually I find it funny how you're the one whos always bashing psnow. I even knew who made the thread before I opened it.

Its true though, psnow sucks and deserves to be bashed. I almost fainted with anger when sony auto renewed my psnow subscription. I had to contact them asap and tell them to give me my money back.

I checked netflix numbers. They launched in 1997, and by 2001 they had 0.5 million subscribers. The growth will be exponential after it catches on.

@Pedro: I see what you’re doing. Well, ok!

Burn it to the ground! PSNow sucks anyways. How does it feel to have your sucky service taken away cows?

GamePass is king baby!

@blaznwiipspman1: The problem with comparing that to Game Pass is that Netflix started kinda slow and caught fire. Game Pass came out pretty hot and has cooled off growth-wise. And the Game pass type subscription model is widely accepted across other media. When Netflix came out, that was all pretty new.

I think what we’re seeing in gaming is that consumers are very accepting of digital games, but there’s still skepticism surrounding subscription services. Game Pass has been a thing for 5 years, yet digital game sales are as healthy as ever. All while Game Pass and PSNow growth has slowed.

It was dumb and confusing to have 2 online services ... so i like this new change with different tiers ... i don't know how good will it be in the long run, but i'm willing to give it a chance for a few months.

In short, some of us knew Stadia was going to be crap from the start. GeForce Now proves itself to be the better streaming service without the BS Stadia tried to pull.

Sony will do day-and-date first party eventually (in my opinion).. until then, PS Now (renamed as PS Plus Extra/Premium) will continue to be an afterthought and mostly irrelevant for all parties involved..

that said, Sony is doing fantastic with the traditional console model so there is little-to-no urgency for them to change anything presently.. the main risk is just letting Game Pass become the de facto subscription service in gaming and then trying to play catch up..

Maybe it'll be like video streaming where people don't mind subbing to multiple services.. or maybe it'll be like music streaming where people tend to just have one sub.. who knows?.. this is uncharted territory for gaming and Microsoft is accepting the risk of trying to pave the way into mainstream territory..

if or when any of this becomes an issue for Sony remains to be seen and we honestly won't have a clear view of that until game streaming becomes both "good enough" and accessible enough for casual gamers to adopt in mass (much like Netflix did with video streaming).. which is still a very long time from now..

@davillain: Putting the actual business model aside, the tech surrounding Stadia is the best of the bunch. Digital Foundry did a breakdown of Stadis vs GeForce Now vs XCloud. Stadia had less input lag than a game being played on Xbox Series X NATIVELY with a wireless controller. Stadia also had the best resolution and image quality. XCloud brought up the rear in nearly every category.

I’d hardly call Stadia “crap” from a tech standpoint. The pricing model and strategy is where it falters. But if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. You get what you pay for…

And that's fair. Google got carried away with the pricing model. GeForce Now was more friendly towards consumers due to linking to Steam library you already own. I'll admit if Google hadn't got so crazy with the prices, it would have been a better streaming service.

you fail to recognize a few things. Gamepass isn't exclusive to a single platform but right now its limited to mainly xbox audience. You can get it on other platforms but the main popularity is from consoles. It still has tons of potential on the PC side, growth on the console side, and of course once cloud gaming grows on mobile as well. GP will have CoD in 8 months or so, and I suspect by then the numbers will go past 30 million at the least.

Lol at psnow, you even put psnow in the same sentence as game pass is an insult.

Well, the hopes was for Sony to offer something more competitive but they didn't in the end.

The mistake Stadia made is exclusive ownership and no built in games with the service. I am surprise it is still alive. Geforce Now and to some extent Gamepass, allow for access to games you already own. GamePass also comes with games. Stadia, comes with nothing and you have to speed additional money for games. That structure is trash.

Well, it started out as an over-priced streaming only service and Sony tried pushing PS users into it by restricting their access to their digital PS1/PS2 classics they purchased on their PS3/PSP systems, and we wonder why it's still struggling?

Whereas Game Pass did everything just the opposite, affordable, all Game Pass games are playable either through subscription or can independently be purchased, no manipulation to users to have to subscribe to play these games, they also offer first party day one exclusives, cross platform entitlements in the UWP ecosystem and cross platform progression, Smart Delivery which allows users to play their games the best way possible without manipulating users to repurchase their games at $70, and they let people stack their XBLG duration and convert to Game Pass Ultimate (and Sony won't). In short, everything Sony did in regard to pushing PS Now and their de-evolving PSN ecosystem and failed, MS did the exact opposite and succeeded.

LOL, no. The only person that would think PS NOW is better is a PS COW.

I wouldn't say PS Now's growth stagnated.

The number of subscribers doubled from 2019 to 2020 and, still saw a 45% increase from 2020 to 2021.

That's quite good by any growth measurement.

Going by STRICTLY past library of games, ps now will have the better offering. However, going by other metric, GP will be better overall.

Ps now is the poor man's gamepass

That’s not true though. The Stadia Pro tier offers games just like the other subscription services. (Not as many though) The free tier also has free games, but in this tier, you’re mostly buying games.

So you can’t say “Stadia comes with nothing.” That’s not true at either tier… Even the free one…

@Pedro: this depends on the games available in the PS Plus Extra tier. There are supposed to be over 400 PS4/PS5 games available.

Sounds to me like that’s some decent competition, if the library has solid titles. And while day one games is a kick in the teeth to Sony, I’m curious to see this all plays out.

And I’m curious to see if we’ll get incredible quality pumped out of the Xbox studios. The Netflix analogy isn’t always a good thing, the quality of entertainment is very hit or miss.

If Sony up the quality of games offered it is a win for gamers. I look forward to the possibility of Sony delivering on that end.

Then I was running with outdated information. Thanks for the correction.

That was Geforce Now not Stadia.

It seems like the rebranding of PSNow to incorporate it with PS+ is to boost the numbers of a service which has been flailing for years. I had zero interest in PS Now and I have zero interest in this new branding. If they offered day 1 games like GP does, I would be much more inclined to subscribe. As it is now, it feels like a cheap copy of a superior service. It may even have more games than GP, but I don't want to have to stream PS3 games. I also want to be able to play PS3, PS2 games and PS1 games I have previously purchased and not have them locked behind a paywall. I much prefer how MS lets me pop-in an old disk and it just works with improved graphics and performance. Even having game trials locked behind a paywall is really irritating to me. This service just is not for me, when services like GP are right up my ally.

I am interested in seeing the library with 400-500 games but is it basically the same amount or less as PS Now right now which offers over 800 games. If it is this with a few PS5 titles added, it doesn't seem like a win to me. I am hoping for a good service, but I am holding onto my money until I see what is involved. Maybe if enough people don't subscribe, Sony would be inclined to add day 1 games, but I know people love paying $70 and don't actually seem to want that for some reason which is truly baffling to me. Hell, I would have been opened to a more expensive tier which offered day 1 games. Make it $22.99/month or $179.99 a year to match GP yearly subscription price and frame it that way, the true GP competitor.

Sorry for the rant. As a fan of PS, I feel like Sony is truly missing a big opportunity to draw people like me into their service.

@pc_rocks: Whoops! You’re right

You're missing out some key details there. Gamepass got to 25M without releasing a lot of new 1st party games for it. That part of the strategy is only starting to come to fruition.

It's likely to get A LOT more gamers when they are getting all that new Bethesda and Activision content on it. Some of which will still be available on PS but be at no extra cost on Gamepass such as CoD. But others will be a lot of games that will not be on PS at all.

If their goal was to have people pay them for games, without owning them...I would say they succeeded.

If their goal was to convince people that streaming is the way, and that we should sacrifice our control to them for convenience...I would say they failed.

I'm not a massive Xbox fan, but their method of backwards compatibility, where you stick your old disc in and it works...better, is a 1000x better than anything Sony is doing. I want to love Sony, but they have been making it hard for years.

@ermacness: not IMO.

Breaks are nowhere in sight. Poo cows. lol :P