Now You Can Download PS4 Titles
After reports back in June that PlayStation’s under-utilized and highly criticized game streaming service PS Now would allow players to download titles from the service to their console, the day has finally come.
The download option will be available exclusively to PS4 consoles and will roll out over the next couple of days. The official announcement over on PS Blog notes that “almost all” PS4 games in the service will be available for download, with no mention of the exceptions. Downloaded games will support purchased DLC, add-ons and microtransactions, and PS4 Pro enhancements for those playing on the upgraded console.
PS+ members can transfer save files from the PS Now cloud to their console’s local storage to pick up where the left off, and subscribers will need to touch base with the internet every few days to verify their subscription.
The service sports a pretty extensive catalog of PS4 games – lots of it unrecognizable to most people – with some real bangers including Bloodborne, Gravity Rush Remastered, the Darksiders remasters, Divinity: Original Sin, and XCOM 2. Here’s hoping the feature comes to the services PS3 and PS2 titles sooner rather than later.
Speaking personally, it’s good to see PS Now finally taking the most important page out of Xbox’s Game Pass book, as it’s not hard to see why the service has struggled – game streaming is a bandwidth annihilator and often a rollercoaster of performance and visual quality. Downloading games allows them to run at their best and players have made it pretty clear that’s what they prefer, which makes it that much more bizarre that the industry seems to be steering towards a more streaming–based future. Everyone keeps asking if the next subscription service is the next “Netflix of games,” but what everyone really wants is more of a digital Blockbuster – freedom to spend the appropriate amount of time with a game, as opposed to the two-cups-and-string feeling that product streaming has now.
Let us know if this development will be enough to sway you into a PS Now subscription in the comments below, and keep it locked to COGconnected for all the latest gaming news!
SOURCE: PlayStation Blog