Over a year after it first announced the feature, Sony is brining game streaming to the PlayStation 3. The subscription and rental service will be available starting on May 12.
Sony will also offer a 7-day trial period for those wanting to test the waters before they officially sign up. This trial only applies to those who did not participate in the open beta.
"We have some exciting news: PlayStation Now subscriptions will be coming to PS3 later this May! Now you'll be able to play a huge library of more than 100 hit PS3 games on PS4 and PS3, as well as select Sony Blu-ray players and TVs, all for one monthly price. That's an incredible number of games to binge on - and of course, you can play your games across devices with cloud saves," said Sony in a statement.
Of course users will only really be able to take advantage of the new service if they have Internet connections that can handle game streaming.
Sony has already made the service available to PlayStation 4 users, as well as users of PlayStation TV and PlayStation Vita. The service, called PlayStation Now, will also soon be available on some Samsung televisions.
Games will be added to the service on a monthly basis. In May, Sony will be adding titles like Fat Princess, F1 2014, Sanctum 2, Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce, and Farming Simulator.
PlayStation Now costs users a monthly fee of $19.99, and also offers gamers the chance to rent games from a wider list for a one-time fee. Sony has high hopes for the service, which it said would be a way to offer backwards compatibility from the PS4 to the PS3. Unfortunately, issues such as lag have plagued the service, making it a somewhat non-essential service for most users. Not only that, but the service is relatively expensive compared to other game streaming services available.
The concept of game streaming has been growing in popularity over the last few years, and could eventually render gaming consoles obsolete. The growth of game streaming, however, is almost directly tied to the rate of growth of Internet speeds, with users being limited in the so-called "quality" of the games they can play by their Internet speed. With improved graphics and larger maps comes a much larger file size, meaning that users need faster Internet to be able to take advantage of these better games.
