When it comes to comparing PlayStation Now to Xbox Game Pass, Sony’s offering tends to get overlooked. Part of that is because Game Pass grabs headlines with big announcements about the games coming to the service. The fact of the matter is that PS Now is a bigger and better contender that most gamers give it credit. It’s not entirely clear why Sony’s service tends to be completely overlooked. Comparing the two offerings side by side, it becomes clear that anyone who turns their nose up at PlayStation Now is sleeping on one of the best video game subscription offerings currently on the market.
PlayStation Now seems to mostly be a victim of its own marketing campaign. Part of its problem is that Sony isn’t folding companies into its portfolio the way that Microsoft has with Game Pass. The acquisition of Bethesda alone allowed the Xbox and PC streaming service to add 20 new games to the catalog, just one day after the acquisition was made official.
PS Now does offer fresh games at a pretty regular clip, but Sony tends to make it so any additions and subtractions all take place at the beginning of the month. Microsoft actually seems to have won the battle of the “video game rental” services by adding games every week. Still, if a gamer is trying to decide between one or the other, there’s plenty of reason to pick PlayStation Now.
Microsoft likely won’t admit it, but one of the biggest reasons why the acquisition of Bethesda was such a massive get, was because of Sony’s propensity of utilizing exclusivity to entice gamers to come to PlayStation consoles. PlayStation Now’s exclusive offering is clearly an extension of that. Microsoft likely doesn’t want to tip its hand entirely, though it did say there are at least some plans to make a few future Bethesda releases exclusive to the Xbox and Windows PCs.
That’s in the future. For now, Sony is still the company that has more well known and well-regarded exclusives. While it hasn’t always been the case that those exclusives were offered for its streaming service, quite a few exclusive games are there now. Among the games that stand out are Bloodborne and Horizon Zero Dawn. Detroit: Become Human and Infamous Second Son are there as well. That doesn’t mean the only reason to get PlayStation Now is to play old first-party games. There’s plenty on offer from other studios and developers, if a gamer is looking for more.
Over the last few months, both Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now have focused on bigger games. However, the key to choosing which service someone might prefer could lie in what older games are on offer. When the Xbox One and PS4 launched, Microsoft’s console had the obvious upper hand in regards to backward compatibility. Xbox One’s backwards compatibility offering allowed people the chance to play Xbox 360 games, eventually alongside a smattering of OG Xbox games.
Sony learned its lesson when it comes to backwards compatibility with the PS5, offering almost universal functionality with PS4 games. However, on its previous generation console, it let PS Now do all the work in that regard. While Sony took a decent amount of heat initially for PS Now being the vehicle to play PS3 games on the PS4, the flexibility seems to have allowed the company to actually do more in the long run. PS Now has plenty of PS4 games on offer, but it also has a ton of PS3 and even PS2 titles that are playable whenever someone gets the itch.
One of the nicest touches of this particular subscription service is that, while it’s adding plenty of bigger titles to PlayStation Now every month, it also keeps an eye on games that hold a special place in a user’s heart. In any one sitting, a user can play Fallout 3, Wild Arms 3 and Ace Combat 7. The range, combined with the depth of generations of games offered on the service is more than comparable to Xbox Game Pass.
While offering a ton of different PlayStation titles every month is a plus, it’s not really where the offering shines the most. Where PlayStation Now really beats Game Pass going away, is how exactly users can play it. Interestingly enough, the ability to either download or stream games has been something the service touted from the very beginning.
While Google Stadia grabbed headlines as a potential cloud streaming giant when it launched, it was beat to the punch by Sony. So was xCloud for that matter, at least at first. “Play Anywhere” is often touted as a relatively new concept, but PS Now allows users to play PS4 games on the Vita, or someone else’s console, or a PC.
Because Sony allows users to stream PS4, PS3 and PS2 games on several different devices, that also means that the entire catalog is on offer at all times. Xbox Game Pass might be adding more titles all the time, but there is a catch when comparing its console and PC libraries. There are some games on one platform that aren’t available on the other. A PlayStation Now user who wants to boot up Doom, can do so without having to stop and check to make sure it’s playable on their home computer or laptop if they’re on the go.
The bottom line is that there are still plenty of skeptics around Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now. On the flip side, there are plenty of people who are giving a subscription service a second or third look. While they are doing that, giving PlayStation Now one more long look would be a very good idea. It may have spent the last few years as an afterthought to many, but it’s getting better all the time.
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