A couple weeks ago Sony officially announced and partially detailed the PlayStation 5. It talked about the system's specs and its features, but it didn't really talk about streaming. However, following the reveal of Google Stadia and Microsoft's persistent push into this space, Sony knew that unlike gamers, investors would want to know what its plans are in this space, and so during its recent financial call it talked about streaming quite a bit.

During the financial call, Sony touched upon its "initiatives" in the streaming space, which includes PlayStation Now. "Sony is committed to the vision of making PlayStation the 'Best Place to Play' by delivering users the best content in the best manner possible. Game streaming is one important way to achieve that," reads a slide from Sony's presentation.

Sony then touches upon how it saw that the future of gaming would evolve into streaming before anyone else, which is why it acquired Gaikai back in 2012, who was a rising competitor in the streaming space at the time. It then used the tech and infrastructure of Gaikai to launch PlayStation Now in 2014.

Next in the presentation, Sony provided some stats around the service, such as the additional countries it added this year and that it boasts 700,000 subscribers.

Sony notes that PlayStation Now has provided it the opportunity to gain a wealth of expertise in this area, which it will use going forward as it grows in the streaming space.

Lastly, Sony reveals that it will discuss its vision and strategy for the streaming space going forward at the Corporate Strategy Meeting and IR Day next month. In other words, it looks like we're going to learn more about what Sony is planning streaming wise for the PS5 and beyond.

One tidbit here that is worth highlighting is that PlayStation Now only has 700,000 subscribers, which is very low, especially when you consider that there's almost 100 million PS4s in the wild. This may partially be due to its absurd $20 a month price-point, but it may also demonstrate that PlayStation gamers aren't interested in streaming or streaming-lite services.

Posted: Apr 29, 2019 7:03 pm
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/04/27/ps5-playstation-5-sony-streaming/