Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Sony...WTF?

The idea of a video game streaming service offering all the PlayStation titles you know and love (or will learn to love)? Hell yeah! I love PlayStation. I love Netflix. I love Reese's Peanut butter Cups. Combine them all and you should get awesomeness. Also known as PlayStation Now.

Seems like a no-brainer. Instead of buying physical media, I can just stream or download a game until I get sick of it. Unfortunately, as pointed out in this article at Kotaku the price model is deranged, as if the guys at Sony said, "Let's take an idea that should make us a billion dollars and shot it in the head." Maybe that's a little too violent; but still, check this out. You currently rent the game based on the amount of time you want it. Okay. But, in the examples given, you can by the games for the same (or less) than you can rent them. For example, you can rent Guacamelee for$15 for a 90-days; but, that's how much it costs to buy it on Amazon. And for Final Fantasy XIII a 90-day rental costs $13 more than it costs to buy the game.

Apparently, there will be some sort of subscription service some time in the future. But, for now, if you are launching a new service and you have the backing of a company worth $148 billion dollars and you have the potential for creating a service that will allow you to make even more money, why screw it up with a moronic pricing model? Particularly since Sony is currently charging people to beta test the service, which does not generate a lot of warm feelings.

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