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PS NOW. Rentals from US$2.99 to US$19.99.

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I think people would pay a considerable convenience premium to have a game instantly at a slightly higher cost even if they don't own it. Especially if I don't have to download 30 gb or go to the store.
 

Om3ga

Member
Do you have any suggestions as to how much it should cost or how much you're willing to pay? There's no doubt Sony is looking for feedback.
$19.99 ($9.99-$14.99 with plus) a month for unlimited access to all games available is fair to me, though I personally wouldn't subscribe at that price.

They could offer a 1-3 month trial with their Playstation TV to get people interested. $9.99 ($7.99 or less with plus) a month is the I WILL subscribe price.

I"m not interested in renting games for 1-90days, but here are a few price suggestions I think would work. If they want to rent games for only 1-4 hours it should be $0.99. No more than that. People are more likely to spend that without thinking to just demo a game. If they like it $2.99 a week, $6.99 a month and $9.99 for 90 days. You'll have nobody complaining at those prices. Rent a game you like for $3.33 a month or rent them all for $9.99 a month.
 
I think people would pay a considerable convenience premium to have a game instantly at a slightly higher cost even if they don't own it. Especially if I don't have to download 30 gb or go to the store.

The thing about that is that playing games via streaming is a really subpar experience compared with playing them locally. While it's obviously very convenient to be able to play something instantly, the reason that Netflix and Prime Instant Video aren't charging people the same prices for streamed content as iTunes and Play are for downloaded HD content, is that it's simply not at the point where the fidelity is even close.

With games, it's even less optimal. You have the full round-trip of input latency and output latency to deal with before the player sees their actions in-game. So as far as I'm concerned, until internet connections are able to provide sub 5ms pings to cloud services, the games should never cost anything close to what it costs for a locally playable version.

I know it's upsetting for some people when I bring up OnLive in this thread, but they have a much more appealing model. The ideal pricing for PS Now in my opinion would be:

- A maximum of $10 a month for a bundle subscription of older and smaller titles
- The ability to purchase games outright on PSN and optionally stream them as part of the PS+ subscription

That kind of pricing would get me in, without any hesitation.
 

Ocaso

Member
$19.99 ($9.99-$14.99 with plus) a month for unlimited access to all games available is fair to me, though I personally wouldn't subscribe at that price.

Is any current subscription service more than $9.99 a month? Off the top of my head I can't think of any, and I believe there's a big psychological barrier in that $10 per month threshold that many people won't cross. I think it's also a DOA service if it goes above $10 a month.
 

westman

Member
PS Now provides both a game and the remote PS3 needed to play it, so the pricing doesn't necessarily need to be competitive with a used/rental PS3 game alone. For those who do not have a real PS3, using a physical copy would not be an alternative anyway. Using the service to stream a PS3 game to a real PS3 makes less sense as a value proposition, and that should be acknowledged by lowering the rental fee, even if the cost to Sony is the same (but I would certainly understand not wanting to price it below cost!)
 

Jinko

Member
While the reactions are valuable, we don't only need to convince Sony, but the publishers. They can suggest a pricing structure, but they can't force one. They don't want to scare them off. Unfortunately, as I said before, Square Enix, needs a lot of convincing. They have a lot of games on PS Now and they make up the majority of the poorly priced rentals. It's publishers, not Sony, that might keep PS Now from really taking off. What Sony should do is put their 1st party stuff and lead the charge.

Well its really in the hands of the consumer, similar to how SE price their games on mobile, if people are willing to pay those fees then they wont' see any reason to lower them.
 

Quasar

Member
There's a huge gulf between streaming movies and games. Netflix would be dead in the water if the audio lagged a few seconds behind the image.

Plus running a game streaming service in terms of server hardware and infrastructure costs seems several times that of streaming video files with no interactivity.

And theres no sub service in video that has current content (aside from what the service makes themselves), at least for film. For TV theres hulu, but even if possible people would not wear hulu frequency ad breaks in games.

So if PSNow is going to have any current content a sub would be much higher and have no real analog.
 

Oni Jazar

Member
If I was Mr. Sony business man I would make it like this:

$2.99 = 2 days.

That's it.

It removes all the comparisons to the $15+ bargain bin argument. 3 bucks is impulse range and if you want more time you keep paying every 2 days. Sucks for the huge RPGs but it keeps everything nice and simple.

Along side that Sony needs a subscription model. I think a lot of people would be more interested if they didn't have to worry about limits. I know Sony mentioned there is a subscription in the works but I'll believe it when I see it.
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
If I was Mr. Sony business man I would make it like this:

$2.99 = 2 days.
You won't ever see that. I think the 7-day price they have is reasonable now though, looks like either $6 or $7 depending on who sets the price. And a month for $8 for most games. Obviously they want everyone to focus on those two brackets, the 4-hr and 90-day ones just seem to be causing the real problems with people here.
 
I'm hoping to buy individual titles for 5-15 bucks in a few years. Until then, I'm not real happy with the service. I'm willing to rent only if a Netflix style subcription model is in place but I don't see that as realistic. I'll just wait for this idea to evolve from its original conception because I don't see many people paying for this. The tech, however, is amazing.
 

jwk94

Member
I wish that amount for 4 hours was cheap for me. Must be nice.

I said relatively. I was more willing to spend money on 4 hours than I was on 7 days. Out of the maybe 5 games I got, I would never have rented for longer than 4 hours. With that gone, it's going to be easy to feel like I've wasted money on games I don't like.
 
I tried El Shaddai with the 4 hour rental for $2.99. It worked great and a marked improvement since the last time I tried the service a month back. It also convinced me to go buy El Shaddai because I was instantly intrigued by the mythological and esoteric story that it had, so that's another plus.
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
That's a start. Now they need to get rid of the ridiculous prices.
$6-7 for a week isn't ridiculous. New games will probably be higher but the baseline is reasonable for the sake of convenience you're getting.
 
That's not a start. The 4 hour rental was convenient for some. It was nice being able to try out a lot of games for relatively cheap.

You shouldn't have to pay to test the game. There should be an adaptive free rental period depending on the game. Longer for RPG's, shorter for PSN titles.
 

Camp Lo

Banned
I think people would pay a considerable convenience premium to have a game instantly at a slightly higher cost even if they don't own it. Especially if I don't have to download 30 gb or go to the store.

I'd pay $99 a year. I wonder if that's enough to entice them.
 
Ok so I tried the beta again last night after a long break and now I have to pay to play these games in the beta? All games were free the last time I tried it. Is it out of beta?
 

icespide

Banned
Throw me out an estimate of what you think it'll be. I haven't been following this thing but I'm interested in the subscription service.

It really depends on what the subscription offers, I bet it would more than likely be something like 15-20 a month, and even then it won't be a "all you can eat" thing

4 hours on a game like Alpha Protocol or Dues Ex is a demo...

if someone pays to rent a game like that for 4 hours, than thats on them. I could see value in offering a 30 minute free test thing or something, but no way they'd do 4 hours
 

Camp Lo

Banned
It really depends on what the subscription offers, I bet it would more than likely be something like 15-20 a month, and even then it won't be a "all you can eat" thing

That's kind of reasonable. I'd pay up for that, if it were like all PS1/PS2/PSP for $20 a month then lower rent premiums on PS3/Vita.
 
If companies are all for an all cloud/digital future, wouldn't it make sense to have the entry bar as low as possible to get more accurate results from that approach? I don't really get this all profit mentality without taking risks.

They price too low for entry, they get backlash if prices need raising. If anything they have to learn that stuff is overpriced and why people are not paying, promoting them to lower prices and find something more acceptable.
 
So I finally got the beta invite today even though I signed up for it the very first day registration was available (which was months ago). Thanks, Sony.

I don't know why I should have to pay to use the service if its still in beta. I tried one of the free games, and the latency was minimal. There was definitely some compression on the image, but you get used to it after a bit. The service works, now it's just all about pricing and selections, as everyone else has already said.
 

SDCowboy

Member
$6-7 for a week isn't ridiculous. New games will probably be higher but the baseline is reasonable for the sake of convenience you're getting.

For old last gen or earlier games, I'd say it's pushing it. Regardless, the prices after a week are where my issue is. As they are now, most are the price the game can be bought for.
 
Ahh it appears that they have removed the 4 hour rentals. Minimum on all the games in the private beta is 7 days. 4 hours are GONE! The "new" structure just appeared today, from what i have noticed.
bOX42wn.png
 
Well with how short some games are recently, they'd be giving people free games.

That's why it needs to be controlled by game type, and certain games shouldn't have one at all. 2-4 hours in a 30 hour RPG is nothing. Meanwhile a 4 hour PSN platformer might only give you 10-20 min to get a feel for the game. Make it a 1 time only thing, keep the save, and put trials on low server priority. I really don't see why it wouldn't work.
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on FFXIII for $7 for the week, just to finally see what the hell's wrong with that game and leave no physical evidence, ha. I figure an RPG is more suited for streaming too, since any lag doesn't really matter as much.

They chose some interesting free beta titles, the shmup and Space Ace the most interesting ones since it's a good way to tell how the lag really does affect things in a game where it matters. Space Ace was surprisingly responsive, and it shows off the quality of the stream since the picture looked like an HD cartoon with no artifacts to be seen. The shmup was very playable, but I have a feeling the controls in the game itself were meant to be a little loose. But for RPGs and anything turn-based, Now seems like it's ready to work well.
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
why should it be free to "test the game"? unless it's for like 5 minutes

It's like a demo. A 30 minute or 1 hour free period per "new game" is the right way to do this and attract people to play and pay for the 7 day period.

Especially if they let you save at the end of the demo period, and if you buy you get to keep playing from that save. It adds to your feeling of "investment" in the game.

One thing I am very impressed with is the amount of changes they are making. I think they really are watching and listening for feedback and not just throwing this service out to die. Good on them because I think if done right, they can lock the market down for streaming games.
 
I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on FFXIII for $7 for the week, just to finally see what the hell's wrong with that game and leave no physical evidence, ha. I figure an RPG is more suited for streaming too, since any lag doesn't really matter as much.

They chose some interesting free beta titles, the shmup and Space Ace the most interesting ones since it's a good way to tell how the lag really does affect things in a game where it matters. Space Ace was surprisingly responsive, and it shows off the quality of the stream since the picture looked like an HD cartoon with no artifacts to be seen. The shmup was very playable, but I have a feeling the controls in the game itself were meant to be a little loose. But for RPGs and anything turn-based, Now seems like it's ready to work well.

The game is ok for about the first 20 hours and then it opens up a bit. Still, prepare yourself for a story so nonsensical that you'll spend an unreasonable amount of time reading the ingame wiki to try and even have the loosest of understandings as to what the hell is going on.
 
New hardware implies new experiences, and while we're used to looking to the biggest, most expensive games to find that originality, there's a growing sense that, this time, the new experience will be more fundamental. As I talk to Yoshida, the most distinctive new experience of this generation seems to be choice: what to play, how to play it, how much it costs, and who you share it with. The games may well be familiar, but the structure around them has changed irrevocably.

With that in mind, PlayStation Now seems like a gilt-edged opportunity for Sony to pull even further away from the pack, offering its users a breadth and immediacy of choice that neither Nintendo nor Microsoft has any obvious plans to rival. Already in closed beta and scheduled to enter open beta in the US and Canada at the end of this month, the nascent cloud service has the seductive potential to be the Netflix or Spotify of gaming. At the very least, Yoshida says, that is Sony's intention.

"We have the vision of bringing hundreds and thousands of PlayStation games to every screen," he says, cautiously. "That's the vision, but we're taking one step at a time. There's investment in the server farm, the tech, internet latency and bandwidth. We have to start from somewhere.

"Wifi is a challenge. Typically, we recommend 5mbps for 720p quality. That's a challenge, especially in some markets. But we also view it as a matter of time, because the infrastructure just gets better and better."

That's almost certainly true, but PlayStation Now's business model remains a prominent and potentially ruinous issue. Reports of pricing in the beta have been what can be charitably described as "schizophrenic," varying from game to game and with price-points for everything from a few hours to three months' rental. In the most egregious examples, renting a game for a few months actually costs more than buying it outright on the PlayStation Store. Yoshida quite rightly describes PlayStation Now as a work-in-progress, but even at this early stage it's clear that a lot of work needs to be done, and, with publishers heavily involved in setting the prices, there is reasonable doubt over whether the industry has the courage of its convictions.

More than anything, Spotify and Netflix have proved that, when it comes to entertainment streaming services, there's a huge audience out there for the one-price, all-you-can-eat approach, and it seems unlikely that games will be treated as a special case. To put it bluntly, the market may already have spoken, and Yoshida insists that Sony is listening.

"We don't know yet," he says about the possibility of a Netflix-esque model for PlayStation Now. "We have been saying that we're looking at doing a subscription model, in addition to rental. Or vice versa: rental in addition to subscription. We're calling it a beta still, and we'll call it that even after it launches in the US and Canada at the end of July. It will still be called an open beta, because we expect it to keep changing in many ways. People are jumping to conclusions.

"I saw some people saying that PS Now is dead on arrival," he laughs, then there's that shake of the head again. "So... it's feedback. This is a long-term strategy for us, and every reaction is valuable."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-07-02-yoshida-i-dont-understand-people-who-only-want-aaa
 
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