I've said this before but I feel it bears repeating
Yoshida specifically said that it would be easier to emulate PS1 games than to stream them. I imagine it's the same for PS2.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/21/psn-transfers-ps4/
In fact SD video can be around a GB/half a GB an hour. streaming more than a few hours will easily get into "more data than the game disk" territory.
That said, for any PS1 game, by the time you've played the game for an hour or two over streaming video, you've already used up enough bandwidth to download all the game data and store it locally. For most PS2 games, it would take longer, but usually not as long as it would take to finish the game.
So it may actually cost MORE money for Sony if they stream old PS1 / PS2 stuff on PS Now rather than utilize software based emulation.
I don't think Sony wants to foot the bill for their hosting costs to exceed that of bandwidth it would take just to download locally. That would make them lose money if they did that.
Most PS1 games average between 300MB to just under 1GB (multi-disc games) in terms of file size in entirety.
The cost to stream a couple of these small games over PSNow would use far more bandwidth for an hours game play time then required to download and store said game locally.
As I said before, this would be a money loser because Sony is the one hosting the servers for the service. They would be consuming more bandwidth that wouldn't be cost effective to warrant streaming PSOne Classics due to their small file size versus the large bandwidth costs.
The streaming which would use far more data than the actual size of the games themselves. It's not cost effective by any means.
Sony would weight the pros and cons of what games that are effective to stream and what which the bandwidth costs wouldn't justify doing so.
With the PS3 streaming there are varied prices per game (I'm sure they have a networking advisor giving the details to a bean counter to estimate usage costs to make it a profitable juncture) At least this is what makes the most sense.
Streaming old PS2 and PSOne titles however, doesn't seem realistic fit into this scope. (At least not in a way that doesn't cost Sony more money to stream rather then sell direct downloads)
Unless of course Sony sold a baseline premium...err say 5 hours of streaming not limited to just individual games but the entire service itself to play whatever games you wanted within that time frame. That way Sony would cover any potential losses and wouldn't have to associate an individual price tag to a specific game.
I however don't see this happening.
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