Announced during Sony corporate strategy.
Update PS now trajectory (Sony made a mistake):
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PS Now subscribers is at 2.2 million (as of April 2020), Remote play monthly users up 2.5x from Dec 2018 to Dec 2019
- Thread starter Kolx
- Start date
Announced during Sony corporate strategy.
Update PS now trajectory (Sony made a mistake):
Wasn't it just one million a couple of months ago? Good growth.
Edit: maybe not looking at the graph.
Edit: maybe not looking at the graph.
Better late than never on Remote Play, they should've released an app for iOS and non-Xperia android devices as soon as they made the mobile app.
Also more devices and platforms.
It is mindblowing that both PS and GP are not supporting the platforms where they have LESS reach.
Given how PS Now was not in a lot of big markets for Sony until March 2019 and it costed the absurd amount of 20$ a month until October, the growth is pretty good.
I'd bet it had more to do with late last year, when they slashed the price of PS Now and improved the offering of titles.
He is right, because the service is very old now. But the growth going from 1 million to 2,2 million is good.
Solid numbers. I hope they invest more in the service next-gen.
Aren't Microsoft providing the infrastructure for this going forward? I wonder when they'll get PS5 hardware in the Azure data centers.
That's actually really awesome. It's Share Play without the console.
Definitvely a lot better than the years before but still rather low compared to other servies growth. They need to promote the service more and different it seems.
Yes, improve the service and people will come. Took them awhile.
How would this work, because PS Now is known as a cloud streaming service and only offering downloadable games would decrease it's value in these countries.
I don't think hardcore gamers would have issues to separate them and know they aren't getting PS3 games. But what about the majority of gamers?
They are in talks. I think a deal is likely, considering the respective CEO talked about them talking about a partnership.
I don't think that's the issue, because we know from Sony that only 5 million users are supported by their infrastructure as of now. That's more likely the issue and they need a partner.
Those regions probably account for 80+% of their market, though.
Not bad numbers, I just subbed myself. Working overnights with not a ton going on sometimes means I've been digging into my backlog with PS Now. And I played like half of Nioh 2 using remote play. Would be nice to see them improve video quality in the future.
Particularly with PS Now it definitely needs some back-end upgrades and stuff. It's what happens when you're one of the first cloud gaming services on the market. With it being based on even earlier tech with Gaikai and OnLive and a lot of their games being PS3 titles, I can understand they have particularly difficult tech challenges to overcome
Particularly with PS Now it definitely needs some back-end upgrades and stuff. It's what happens when you're one of the first cloud gaming services on the market. With it being based on even earlier tech with Gaikai and OnLive and a lot of their games being PS3 titles, I can understand they have particularly difficult tech challenges to overcome
They already have MS as a partner to use Azure. I guess it's just a matter how to transition it.
Source for the 5 million capacity and their future plans.
I think one of the challenges will be the PS3, because Sony hasn't developed a emulator as far as we know. This means PS3 hardware needs to be in every azure datacenter around the world imo or you limit how many users can access old games.
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I imagine they will be announcing changes to PS Now this year. I believe their partnership with MS on Azure will allow them to increase the resolution to 1080p and to scale beyond that 5 million capacity number. This will be when they will aggressively expand the service and marketing, including new countries.
As for PS+, I believe we will also see changes here with new pricing structures and synergy with PS Now.
As for PS+, I believe we will also see changes here with new pricing structures and synergy with PS Now.
Just because comparisons to Game Pass and its 10 million sub figure are being drawn I figure I'll cross post from the other thread:
Keep in mind that Xbox's entire game plan lives and breathes on Game Pass going forward and they're positioning themselves accordingly. Playstation is not currently positioning themselves in the same way for PS Now and for now are maintaining a much more diverse business model.
It's also worth keeping in mind Xbox has been running a lot of sales for Game Pass and has been running a promotion to let Gold users convert to GPU for a dollar since E3 of last year. Now subscribers are completely separate subscribers paying full price for the service.
This isn't to downplay the achievements of Game Pass and its milestone of 10 million subscribers, but I think context is very important when comparing numbers and how they got there. There are a lot of factors that muddy the waters when trying to draw a direct comparison.
Keep in mind that Xbox's entire game plan lives and breathes on Game Pass going forward and they're positioning themselves accordingly. Playstation is not currently positioning themselves in the same way for PS Now and for now are maintaining a much more diverse business model.
It's also worth keeping in mind Xbox has been running a lot of sales for Game Pass and has been running a promotion to let Gold users convert to GPU for a dollar since E3 of last year. Now subscribers are completely separate subscribers paying full price for the service.
This isn't to downplay the achievements of Game Pass and its milestone of 10 million subscribers, but I think context is very important when comparing numbers and how they got there. There are a lot of factors that muddy the waters when trying to draw a direct comparison.
For Sony there's a massive market outside of these regions. If they launch it in LatAm, Australia, ME and Asia, the numbers will skyrocket. Especially if they go with regional pricing like PS+ in some countries.
Yup, there are a ton of avenues for growth with this service and I imagine we'll start hearing about that at or around the PS5 reveal event.
I fully expect a new subscription tier to transition their 41+ million Plus subs over to a more expensive sub that includes Now.
But on the flipside, PS Now has a free trial for anyone, for 12 months it's almost half the price of even Game Pass standard (without Ultimate), and it includes streaming as part of that too. It's also been around a lot longer than Game Pass.
The people doing the free trial are not included in the 2.2 million figure.
Beyond that, there are indeed differences between the services that will affect their numbers. For example PS Now is only available in 19 countries right now. That adds to my point that there are a lot of subtleties to keep in mind when trying to draw direct comparisons.
Interesting mention of remote play, maybe PS5 in combination with streaming/cloud services will add additional features to or improve remote play.
I think his point about the free trial was more that since anybody can try it for free, you would think people who actually subscribed at the end of that trial would be higher.
Possibly, but the service seeing a more than 100% growth in a year is a sign that it's going in the right direction. It's now up to them to basically relaunch the service with next gen as it's backbone with more countries, more devices, PS5 hardware in data centers and more games to grow it significantly more.
Good points. I believe part of the disappointment lies in Sony not using their first mover advantage after acquiring Gaikai. If you look at it in that frame, Sony took far too long to develop and mobilize PS Now.
At the same time, I don't believe Sony's first party portfolio would be where it's at now if Sony had gone all-in on cloud gaming back in 2012. For example, we might not have had an Insomniac acquisition and Sony may have had to change to a quantity over quality approach (think Game Pass filler games like Bleeding Edge)
Now PlayStation Studios is considered one of the premier publishing houses and almost single-handedly driving mind share for the PS5 even with minimal marketing. It would be hard to say Sony didn't focus on the right priorities this gen. Going back to PS Now, I don't think we will see Sony releasing their PSS games Day 1 on the service. What I can see is a continuation of offering their older first party games in rotation, and after a period (maybe 4 years) add them permanently to the collection. This is maximizing the selling period of individual games and leveraging their appeal in PS Now. It also introduces new players to the franchise, not unlike releasing Horizon on PC, which could lead to higher sales of new entries to those franchises on the PS5.
I think some games will launch day 1, but ones that make sense like multiplayer titles, smaller titles and indies.
I would like to see them also make it more like Stadia where you can play your PSN purchased games via Now as long as you're subscribed. Add value in different ways to give people multiple reasons to sub.
Xbox is insignificant outside of the Anglosphere. I highly doubt they're getting any significant chunk of that additional ~8m subscribers from outside of those 19 countries where PS Now is available.
