PlayStation Now Available On January 13 With Subscription Service

Sony has been working on the PlayStation Now beta for a few months, fixing some of the kinks on the service, and adding a new subscription option, for customers who don’t want to rent a video game. The streaming service will launch on January 13 across the U.S. and Canada. Sony has not gave any confirmation when or if PlayStation Now will arrive in Europe or Japan.

Users can subscribe for one month for $19.99 or three months for $44.99 (around $15 a month), oddly, there is no option for a one year subscription. It is not clear if the subscription will auto-renew. For anyone wanting to test the water, Sony will offer a seven day free trial of the service, to see the games on offer. Users will also be free to rent titles whenever they want, with or without the subscription.

The renting option is less interesting, considering most titles cost more than their cost on PC for only 30 days of use, and in some cases cost more to rent the game for a week then to own it forever on another platform.

Darksiders was available for rent on the beta version, costing $3 for 4 hours, $6 for a week, $8 for 30 days and $15 for 90 days. Not really excellent value for money, considering it is rented and not bought.

Sony has a huge range of games from the PS1, PS2 and PS3 that it could port over in time, but in its current form PlayStation Now looks like a bit of a hard bargain, considering it is $19.99 for a few dozen titles.