By: RJ (@rga_02)

I was recently helping out my parents set up their fancy new Bravia TV. I then noticed that it was PlayStation Now enabled. This spiked up my interest as I never really got a chance to play around with PlayStation Now for an extended period before. This service could be the future of gaming.  

I had the TV all to myself for the weekend to experience the future. That weekend however, was one that made me shun the potential future of gaming.

For those who don’t know, PlayStation Now is Sony’s cloud based service for streaming PlayStation 3 games to devices such as the PlayStation Vita/4, Bravia TVs and Xperia smartphones. You can also say that it is also their answer to backwards compatibility for the PlayStation 4. Now this sounds like a wonderful service to a lot of people. For me however, I could live without it. Why though?

I’m too attached to Physical media.

I can understand and value the convenience of digital entertainment. Nothing beats having a whole library of videogames in front of you ready to play at any given moment. However, I love physical media. I love owning the game itself knowing that should my Internet go down or gets throttled rendering PlayStation Now useless, I can always pop in a disc and play without any worries. That brings up the next issue I have.

Internet connections

This is the United States of America. We may be number one in spreading freedom throughout the world, but when it comes to Internet services, we have to deal with the likes of AT&T or Comcast. Latency is king when it comes to certain games. I would not want to be playing Ridge Racer or Dynasty Warriors if all the sudden, AT&T decides to throttle me and I then find myself looking at the videogame grind to a lag fest.

Pricing

It is simply not worth it at the price they are charging at the moment. I understand they someone needs to help pay the bills, but it’s a bit ridiculous. It’s currently $20 for one month or $45 for three months. With that kind of money, you can outright buy the games they are currently offering. Even more ridiculous is the rental prices for individual games. For example, want to play Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends for more than a month? Prepare to fork up $23. With the same price, you can get the game new or used at Amazon.

Of course, this is all my opinion. What I find to be a poor value might be a great value to another. For the time being however, let me stick to my ancient physical media. I have no worries if my internet will go down or if my credit card will automatically get charged if I want to play a game for another month. PlayStation Now might redeem itself for me in the future, but for the time being, I will just embrace the past.