Sony finally has a real competitor to Xbox Game Pass with the addition of game downloads to PlayStation Now. Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now are kind of like Netflix for video-games if you haven’t heard of them. One key difference until today however was that on Xbox Game Pass you have to download your games and on PlayStation Now you had to stream them.
With the update, which should be rolling out to all PlayStation Now subscribers over the coming days, you will be able to download most PS4 and PS2 games that are offered on the service to your PlayStation 4 console. This feature is not available on PC because PCs cannot emulate PS4 very well as of now and you will not be able to download PS3 games to the PS4 because of the same reason. It really does seem that PS4 will never gain backwards compatibility with PS3 which is a shame because that leaves Xbox with the advantage of being able to download games across three generations. Another advantage to Game Pass is that any new Xbox exclusive games will automatically be added to the service.Of course it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t list Sony’s advantages too. Sony offer closer to 600 games while Xbox is down around the 100 game mark which is a huge difference. You can also play PlayStation Now games online without a PlayStation Plus subscription.
I see a big growth in store for PlayStation Now thanks to the ability to finally download games. I’m sure it’s the one thing stopping a lot of people from trying the service. You can even try your first month at the reduced price of $9.99 (regularly $19.99). You can also get different subscription tiers for the service $44.99 getting you 3 months ($29.99 for PS Plus subscribers) and $99.99 for a year. Getting a monthly subscription is definitely the most expensive way to get access to the service which is why I would recommend going with the 3 month or 12 month tiers.
Let us know what you think of the new features being added to PlayStation Now in the comments down below!