Sony is giving PlayStation Now a price cut to stay competitive as new options enter the market. PlayStation Now is a subscription service with a huge number of PlayStation games. It enables players to stream from the cloud or download and play directly from a PS4. Now, its price is more in line with Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass.
In the United States, you can get PS Now for $10 per month or $60 per year. That is down from $20 monthly and $100 annually. And Sony is enacting similar price cuts across Canada, Europe, the U.K., and Japan.
In a blog post, PlayStation Network vice president Grace Chen explicitly cited competing platforms as the reason for this change.
“PlayStation Now is the first and only console game subscription service that uses cloud technology to deliver an unprecedented breadth of games through streaming and downloading,” writes Chen. “Starting today, PS Now will be offered at a more compelling price that is comparable to other entertainment streaming services on the market.”
This $10 price should make PlayStation Now far more attractive to consumers. At $20 per month, the service looked out of sync with other subscription platforms. You can get Game Pass, Spotify, and Netflix each for less than that. At $10, PS Now is in a much better position to get impulse purchases from PS4 owners.
PlayStation Now price cut comes as God of War hits the service for a limited time
Even at $10, Sony’s service is still going to have to compete with Game Pass and, to a lesser extent, Stadia. With Game Pass, Microsoft is working on creating a library of recent releases, older classics, and all of its first-party games. Gears 5 hits Game Pass on console and PC the same time it went live for purchase. And that’s the same for all Xbox Studios releases.
Microsoft is also launching a beta of its Project xCloud game-streaming technology this month. If it combines that with Game Pass, Xbox’s option could quickly surpass Sony’s due to the strength of Microsoft’s global cloud.
To ensure that PS Now continues to look like a good deal, Sony needs to continue improving its library. Even as Chen points out that it already has more games than its competition, it is ready to boost that roster for the fall.
“We currently have the largest game library of any console game subscription service, with more than 800 games available,” writes Chen. “Starting today, we’re adding more blockbuster content that includes some of the most highly played and critically acclaimed PS4 games ever.”
Starting today, you can play the following games on PS Now:
- God of War
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Infamous: Second Son
- Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
But unlike Game Pass, Sony is putting a hard expiration date on these blockbusters. You can only play them for the next three months. On January 2, the company is pulling them from PS Now.
The plan, however, is to regularly replenish PS Now with a new list of similarly impressive games.
“Each month, the service will add a new selection of marquee games that will be available for a limited period,” writes Chen. “The marquee content is on top of the existing offering of popular evergreen titles that are added to PS Now on a regular basis.”
