PlayStation just announced an exciting feature coming to PS Plus: cloud streaming. Now that we know Sony are going in this direction, the strange design of the new PSP makes a lot more sense.
The age of the download is over, the time of cloud streaming has come. But...do most PS5 users even want cloud streaming? Who is this service really appealing too?
- We think we've found the perfect game to stream!
Sony To Offer Cloud Streaming To PS Plus Premium Members
As revealed in a recent blog post, Sony have begun testing cloud streaming, and they plan to roll this feature out soon to all PlayStation Plus Premium members:
We’re currently testing cloud streaming for supported PS5 games – this includes PS5 titles from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Game Trials, as well as supported digital PS5 titles that players own. When this feature launches, cloud game streaming for supported PS5 titles will be available for use directly on your PS5 console.
This is the kind of feature we expect most PS5-users to largely ignore. As annoying as downloading can be, it's worth it to be able to enjoy games at a consistent frame-rate.
But we don't think this feature is being targeted at the average PS5-user. Instead, we suspect that cloud streaming is being introduced to encourage sales of the PlayStation Q.
The PlayStation Q is the new PSP, and it's only capable of streaming games. When it was first announced it was described as though you would need to download every game on to your PS5, and then stream from your PS5 to your PlayStation Q. But with cloud streaming in place, PlayStation Q users could just stream directly from the Sony servers without needing to download games to their PS5 first.
This makes the whole product more appealing. You could keep one set of games downloaded on the PS5 that require higher frame rates, like competitive shooters for instance, and then other games that don't require higher frame rates could simply be streamed direct to the PlayStation Q.
More importantly, this opens up the possibility to use a PlayStation Q without owning a PS5. And there's probably a ton of Xbox and PC gamers out there who want to try Sony's first-party games without going all in on a $500 console (we don't know the price of the PlayStation Q yet, but it's certainly going to be less than that).
Would you get a PlayStation Q for cloud streaming? Or are you still firmly in the camp of wanting to own and play games from your own device?
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