PlayStation Now, Sony's streaming service that gives players access to over 400 PS3 games, is now live on the PC in the UK and US. For $19.99 (£12.99) a month you get access to a huge library of PS3 games (with PSX and PS2 games supposedly coming down the line), a good portion of which have been exclusive to consoles, until now. There's also a seven-day free trial if you're on the fence. With the launch of the service comes six additional games, a few of which aren't playable on the PC anywhere else:
- Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
- Heavy Rain
- Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution
See the rest of our favorite games from the service here.
The client itself is pretty simple, a big assemblage of scrolling boxes divided into categories that looks pretty similar to Netflix' interface. There's even a 'list' which functions as a queue. Pretty convenient.
Games are pretty easy to get into as well. Launch a game and the service will connect with a server, load up in your profile, download the cloud saves (if you have any), and then bam, you're in it. Nearly any controller will work too. I played some God of War with an Xbox Elite controller and felt downright naughty. Even if it's running at a low resolution from a server a few hundred miles away, it feels pretty rad.
I tested out a few games, and while we'll have some more extensive impressions soon, I was impressed with how responsive my input was. Street Fighter IV played liked Street Fighter IV, with almost no discernible input lag. I'm sure a pro would notice, but I was pulling off basic combos without issue. Most impressive is the sheer convenience of the application. It's simple, slick, and the novelty of having a low-impact resizable window with The Last of Us on my second monitor is something else.
