MS is planning to upgrade xCloud hardware to Xbox Series X next year. Testing is going on now.
PS Now is garbage compared to Gamepass, that’s why they had to drop the price because no one used it. Gamepasses catalog is far better and the streaming tech of PSNow sucks. Sony hasn’t done a thing to update it compared to service like Geforce Now.
It’s actually 3 times as expensive on an annual sub.
Streaming has worked great for me on PS Now. It’s also a catalog that’s like 3 times as large as GP. The biggest limitation is 720p streaming, but that’s all you’re getting with xCloud, too. PS Now will probably get a huge refresh with the PS5 launch.
The catalog sucks in comparison. Gamepass is hands down the best sub service in gaming. It’s not even close.
The PS Now catalog is awesome, and it’s a good service. Sony doesn’t seem to have an interest in pushing it to the forefront of their activity, though, and seems primarily interested in leaving it as a “catalog title” experience, like Netflix was when it started. The focus from MSFT seems to be making Game Pass a service more akin to modern Netflix - a place to get new stuff, different stuff, etc. Adding the streaming to it is another layer of that (and is an awesome addition). Sony also doesn’t have the benefit of a huge cloud infrastructure to build on, which may force their hand at limiting how much emphasis they’re placing on growing PS Now.
Both have value; MSFT seems to have achieved their goal of making the perceived value of Game Pass higher.
PS Now started as a PS3 service. How many current generation games are on the service? And PS Now was originally a Netflix service - streaming PS3 games. They added downloading PS4 games relatively recently. Game Pass is and has always been a download service.
Sony had a huge first mover advantage here. Too bad they seem to have squandered it.
I think we’re mostly agreeing. GP is awesome and obviously has a ton of MSFT’s attention. PS Now could be a great service, but isn’t Sony’s focus. That being said, it’s still a solid service for catching up on catalog titles, so it represents great value. It’s got a boat load of games.
I’m a huge GP fan, and I keep trying to convince like every gamer I know to sign up. I’ve played more games on GP for Xbox and PC this past year than not.
Edit - more or less what I’m saying is every gamer should sign up for both services and be thankful for untold backlog riches through them the likes of which we couldn’t imagine ten years ago.
I think they’re very different service offerings. Especially because xCloud is part of Ultimate, which is an all-in-one offering and being added for “free” - although I’m pretty sure Microsoft planned to add xCloud from the beginning of Ultimate.
PS Now is a stand-alone subscription which has to survive on its own (de-)merits.
We’ll see. Sony has often lagged MSFT on service offerings (like XBL) - or at least lagged in making them polished, useful offerings. They’ll play wait and see here, but due to the large infrastructure requirements for streaming, they’ll definitely be on the back foot when (if) they race to catch up.
Seems to be about 300.
Yup, as seen here:
Which to me begs the question why Sony hasn’t been more successful with PS Now. Streaming and download. More games than Game Pass. Out for several years. Was originally on several platforms, including TVs, PC, and Mac.
What did they do wrong?
It’s mostly old games. Now, it’s good to have a back catalogue but it needs more.
The original offering was a much worse proposition than the current one. They also have no desire to market it, and don’t get first party titles - or any titles, afaik - on day one. Plus, the first party stuff tends to rotate out after a few months which I consider a mistake. Even if they only put their older exclusives on the service and left them there forever, letting the catalog grow it would be a much more interesting value proposition. Sony’s first party offerings are a major advantage this cycle.
Exactly right. Nobody gives a crap about old stuff. Game Pass puts brand new games up, day one of release. It’s treated like a first class citizen.
All this talk of updating their hardware. For some reason, I thought xCloud was like a console version of Steam Link (that’s the thing, right?), that let you stream games from your own Xbox? Apparently that isn’t the case? Huh.
You can already do this with the Xbox app on a Windows 10 PC.
It’s both. In the beta, I’ve used xCloud to stream my own Xbox to my phone, and I’ve also used xCloud to play games that I don’t own and don’t have installed anywhere, streamed and played over my phone.
But backwards compatibility!
Anyhow, I do wonder how if these services are successful and move to more the norm of consumption like streaming did for video how that will long term impact the industry. On one hand you could see an increase in odd games to boost the portfolio but at the end of the day retention is the primary business concern which seems like it would encourage more GaaS.
That’s definitely a feature they’ve announced as coming to xcloud but they haven’t put a date on it yet.
They’ve allowed In-Home streaming for a while. Over the internet is the newer part, and they did lump that under the xCloud banner.