PS4 News: Sony PlayStation shock console announcement is yet more bad news for Xbox One (Pic: Sony)
While the Xbox One subscription service Xbox Game Pass seems to get a lot of chatter, Sonys own PS4 games on demand service is performing well above expectation according to the companys latest financial figures.
In a recent shareholder conference call Chief Financial Officer, Hiroki Totoki, specifically addressed PlayStation Now, stating that the service currently has more than 700,000 users.
On average, the number of people paying for memberships has increased 40% every year since PlayStation Now launched back in 2014.
Its an apt time for Sony to be reviewing its future streaming strategy. Of the industrys three major platformers, Sony was the first to invest in this emerging technology.
However, with the Xbox One having been left in the dust by the PlayStation 4, Microsoft is looking to seize the next hardware generation with firm focus on cloud gaming.
Similarly, Google now poses a threat to the entire gaming industry as we know it, throwing down the gauntlet last month with the announcement of Google Stadia.
(Pic: Sony)
Perhaps even more of a threat to Sony than its traditional rival, Google Stadia does away with console hardware, allowing anyone to play on a device that can access the Chrome browser.
Although Stadia threw its hat into the ring with a audacious flare, whether it performs as well out in the wild remains a mystery. We also dont know how much the service will cost, or how it distributes revenue to those companies that host games on the Stadia platform.
With Sony being forced to think more about streaming, we could see PlayStation Now make some serious changes in order to stay competitive. For a lot of gamers, the main barrier to entry has been price.
A month of PlayStation Now costs £12.99 whereas an annual pass will set you back £84.99. Could Sony pull a similar move to Microsoft and start bundling PlayStation Now and regular PlayStation Plus subscriptions? That seems plausible.
The PlayStation Now streaming service has been running since January 2014 in North America before going live in the UK in March 2015, hitting the rest of Europe the following month before launching in Japan later that year.
(Pic: Sony)
Despite the somewhat slow rollout from Sony, the PlayStation Now has still been very popular, according to data from a recent report by SuperData.
It noted the PS Now had grabbed the lions share of gaming subscription series in the third quarter of 2018.
The report detailed that PlayStation Now takes up a massive 52% of the market share, while the Xbox Game Pass only occupies 15%.
And with suggestions from Sony Italys General Manager Marco Valetta that the company is looking to add “exclusive content” we can only foresee the service improving as Sony takes the increasing importance on streaming even more seriously.
Of course its worth reminding ourselves that PlayStation Now wasnt the first streaming platform of its kind.
Before it, the most notable example was OnLive which, looking bacRead More – Source
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