PlayStation Now has a story that began in 2010. The whole idea didn’t take shape until August 2012, when Sony Computer Entertainment America acquired Gaikai for $380 million. Gaikai was founded in November 2008, Gaikai was a cloud streaming service in the games industry. In 2003, cloud hosting, cloud gaming, and everything in between had been growing exponentially, and hit an equilibrium when OnLive took the stage at GDC 2009. At this point, Gaikai, and OnLive was going head-to-head against each other, larger companies wanted a piece of their proverbial pie. A lot of speculation ensue: Microsoft was rumored to acquire OnLive, and Sony (& several other major players) were rumored that it wanted Gaikai. It all came down to one moment at E32012: Papers were signed, and speculations began… Sony was to announce that it had acquired Gaikai. Everything calmed, went radio silent until August, when Sony completed the purchase.
In 2010, the first version of Gaikai was a public beta on desktops, tablets, mobile phones. At the PlayStation Meeting on February 21st, 2013, Dave Perry took the stage to make a teaser for PlayStation Now: Cloud Gaming, and Remote Play would come to PS4. No one knew what they meant by “Remote Play” was at the time, until E32013 when Sony had their own conference, revealed most of the PlayStation Now features including Remote Play. It was shown briefly during the conference to show off how the concept worked. They also said the public beta of PlayStation Now would arrive in 2014. The first public, live demo of Remote Play between PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation 4 was shown during GamesCom 2013, the demo showed how you can bring PS4 version of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, into PlayStation Vita.
PlayStation Now – Sony’s Game Streaming service
PlayStation 4’s launch on November 15th, 2013 was home to the early beta of Gaikai’s Cloud Streaming service, the PlayStation Now. The new and improved version of the PSVita-to-PS4 Remote Play was also launched at the same time. In 2014, Sony slowly rolled out PlayStation Now across the PlayStation Network to include PS3, and PSVita. The early betas of PlayStation Now was imperfect during both PlayStation 4’s launch, and beyond, but players sent information back to Sony to improve the service. Various pricing structures was beta tested during Summer 2014, through the new year. Which brings us to the new announcement: PlayStation Now launches on January 13th, 2015. Sony also revealed new pricing structures with the announcement…
PlayStation Now costs $19.99 a month, and $44.99 for the duration of 3 months subscription. Sony will launch PlayStation Now with more than 100 PlayStation 3 games, with more on the way. Sony will hold a sweepstakes draw to give you a chance to win PlayStation Now for a whole year by downloading the PSNow theme on your PS3/PS4 before January 31st. Not only that, to help you ease into the whole “all-you-can-play” model, Sony is giving away 7 days free trial to the service.
