Backwards Consideration

PlayStation probably have the highest consideration for their enormous catalogue of games over the last two generations. What they're doing is a streaming service called PlayStation Now.

Its going through Beta at the moment, and they're primarily focusing on PlayStation 3 games. I think that's fair since that will have the largest workload to it for streaming.  Once you have the biggest problem overcome, everything else is a cakewalk.

I watched the video above and I immediately have my problem with it.  Its an online hiring service.  Paying to play a game for a short period.

Its not an unfounded idea. Go down to the local V2 or Blockbuster, and you'll hire out a game for the week (if they offer that, its usually a few days) and for a pretty cheap price too, usually about a fiver.  Then for that period of time, you can play to your hearts content, possibly flogging the shit out of it if it's a big game like Grand Theft Auto.

But there's a physical disc involved. The store needs insurance that it'll come back.  And that sort of thing happens all the time.  Even I'm guilty of that, having been charged a large amount for a game I forgot to return.  So it's fair enough that it can get a bit pricey.

But judging from the prices on Playstation Now, they're expecting you to start reselling the game and making a profit from them!  I'm not the only one who thinks this, I've spied many other articles regarding this saying their largest problem is that the games are simply too expensive for such short time periods that you may as well buy the game itself.

Just to point out the obvious though, this isn't "Send this disc to your front door".  But you don't have to download it either.  It's streamed.  So you send the commands to a server and sends the image back to your console.  It's a fantastic concept.  It saves on having to worry about backwards compatibility hardware, because it's just done from a server room.

But...  it doesn't absolve my biggest worry.  I've purchased a handful of games from Playstation Network.  They're all designed to be played on the Playstation 3.  So what about those purchases?  Will I be able to download and play them?  Would I be able to stream them?

What about my old games?  Could I slot them in and have the system detect what game it is, then stream it from the servers?  Because that is the dream.  To get replace my consoles.  To have a reason to go into a Brick and Mortar Store to get a discount on a new console by handing my old console to them, to send back to Playstation so they can recycle the parts to make more current gen consoles or whatever you can do with them.

And yet, they'll never change.  I'll have museum pieces for years to come because of their inconsideration.  Bastards.