Should PS+ and PS Now merge services?

[sepheroithisgod]

I think there needs to be more of a focus on PS Now. It only has 2.2 million subscribers and it's been around for years. Meanwhile, the Game Pass is rapidly growing and just surpassed 18 million subscribers.

 

It was made to allow PS4 players to play PS3 games. It just needs a full overhaul at this point.

Edited March 11, 2021 by sepheroithisgod

[starcrunch061]

15 hours ago, kidson2004 said:

Was just talking to a few buddies of mine and I brought this up. Y’all think they should merge services to make a PlayStation Ultimate Pass? (I actually came up with that name lol) 

 

Not if it also means an increase in price. The fact is, I just don't think PSNow, in its current state, is a worthy year-on-end subscription service, and I would hate to have the monthly games and online perks (cloud saves, MP) tied to it.

 

15 minutes ago, sepheroithisgod said:

I think there needs to be more of a focus on PS Now. It only has 2.2 million subscribers and it's been around for years.

 

Agreed completely, but Sony management seems really poor in this regard.

 

I commented back last year when I bought a PSNow subscription on the cheap that it was surprising that Sony didn't improve significantly its PSNow service after COVID-19 introduced a ton of new subscribers. But Sony's management just misses its cues on these things, to its detriment.

 

15 minutes ago, sepheroithisgod said:

It was made to allow PS4 players to play PS3 games. It just needs a full overhaul at this point.

 

Again, complete agreement. The fact is, the streaming side of PSNow just flat-out sucks. It crashes often, and the crashes are of the really hard variety. Even when it's working, it's really only "working" (the speed of streaming drops for no good reason often, and while it's not as bad at kicking you out as it used to be, it still happens a lot).

Edited March 11, 2021 by starcrunch061

[dakk55]

I do think that PS+ and PSNOW needs a bit of overhaul. Free games are nice and all, and the occasional Plus Discounts. But if they tried merging into one service, it would be unnecessary and as said before, the increased price would make some people unhappy considering there are people who can't use PSNow effectively for reasons. If they had discounts or packages to make it cheaper to buy both at once, I can see that being better received. If Sony wants the PSNow and PS+ to succeed more than Microsoft's Gamepass, they need to make the PS+ discounts more widespread, I know some people who would love having a discount for DLC or subscriptions to some of the apps.

[ChiefMichigan]

They probably will, but I'd prefer they didn't. I would like a discount on having both.

[Agent_Renegade22]

I don't think Sony needs to merge them, they simply need to do more advertising on PS Now because is ridiculous there are only around 2 milion subscribers on a total of 110+ milion PS4. 

PS Now is the most similar counterpart to Microsoft Game Pass and imo it has a lot of potential to grow yet I have the impression Sony don't care at all about PS Now.

I got my PS4 recently and from what I've experienced, I downloaded and used way more PS Now games rather than PS Plus games, and recently new Plus games are mostly games that are/were available on Now long time ago (Shadow of War and Shadow of Tomb Raider for example).

I'm fine with Plus as well because some months are really good (Control Ultimate last month and FF7 Remake this month), but yea it would be a very clever move for Sony to advertise PS Now more, we're talking about a service that features like 800 games, and almost all of them are available indefinitely, the only downside I've experienced with it regards the streaming of PS3 games and I hope Sony will fix connection issues because my connection is way better than 5-10 Mbps required to stream according to Sony.

[AJ_-_808]

1 hour ago, sepheroithisgod said:

I think there needs to be more of a focus on PS Now. It only has 2.2 million subscribers and it's been around for years. Meanwhile, the Game Pass is rapidly growing and just surpassed 18 million subscribers.

 

It was made to allow PS4 players to play PS3 games. It just needs a full overhaul at this point.

 

I thought psnow was ridiculously overpriced when it was first introduced.  At $20/month, I completely disregarded and never looked at it again.

 

Less than 2 years ago, they cut the price to $10/month, but how much damage/disinterest was already done by the original price? 

 

Disregard annual sub discounts etc because the $20/month rate would've been the first thing a lot of people saw and that would be enough to turn people away.  Some Google searches still show the $20/month price. 

 

It's harder to repair damage/win back people than if they had a reasonable price from the beginning.  Hell, I didn't even know about the price drop until I looked it up a few minutes ago.

 

 

[guy_flies]

I'd love this. Australia doesn't get PS Now. If the two merged we might finally be able to access it. I have some PS3 games I'd like to revisit.

[DrBloodmoney]

The problem with PS Now is that, for people who are jumping onto Playstation consoles now, having been Xbox or Nintendo before, or not having a console at all, it is an inarguably fantastic financial proposition.

All that back-catalogue for that price?

No question - it's an outstanding deal.

 

For people (like me, and a lot of us I suspect) who have been on Playstation for years though, the vast, vast majority of that catalogue is already owned, and since brand new stuff doesn't come to it, it makes the proposition not so great.

 

I mean, paying a subscription to access 700 games you haven't played before is one thing, but paying the same subscription to play maybe 2 or 3 games you haven't played, that you could probably pick up each individually for the same price as one month of the subscription, and which you don't have any guarantee that they will remain on the service long enough for you to actually finish?

 

That just doesn't appeal - to me at least.