PlayStation Now First Look: Smooth Gaming Without the Console

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Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

By Pete Pachal2014-05-06 20:28:03 UTC

You'll soon be able to play PlayStation games without the PlayStation. That's the promise of PlayStation Now, which streams games directly to Sony Smart TVs over the Internet.

At a demo of Sony's 2014 lineup of 4K TVs, I got some hands-on time with a beta version of PlayStation Now, which Sony first announced earlier this year at CES. Sony wouldn't let us take any photos of the demo screens since the software isn't finalized, but company reps walked us through the experience, and we played a couple of games — in this case, streamed from a PlayStation 3 standing in for the online service.

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Sony plans to launch PlayStation Now "later this year," so the service won't be available on the company's 2014 line of TVs when they ship in the coming months; it'll come later as a software update. When that happens, the service will appear as an option along the top ribbon menu — along with Channel (TV), Music, Album (photos), Music and Apps.

Once you select it, you'll see a grid of PlayStation games. For the demo, the menu had about 20 PS3 titles — including Fuel, Sniper Elite V2, Contrast and Puppeteer — but at launch Sony said PlayStation Now would offer at least 100 games.

Upon selecting a game, you'll see a purchase screen. Users will be able to choose a rental period of 1, 7 or 30 days. Pricing hasn't been finalized, so all the options in our demo cost nothing. When you pick one, you're directed to a standard payment screen.

After the game boots up (which took a while, but mainly because we were using a PS3), you're ready to play. Using a regular wireless PlayStation controller, I snuck around some ruined buildings in Sniper Elite V2, aiming my rifle — with its awesome close-up scope — at various targets. Through it all, I couldn't detect any lag — it was just like playing directly through the console. The same went for Fuel.

Exiting the game was easy enough, although the service will ask you to give the game a star rating if you haven't already. The PlayStation Now storefront will include crowd-sourced ratings, just like any app store.

A word about Sony's new Smart TV UI: It's amazing. It's by far the best way to integrate web services on a TV that I've seen so far, and it's miles ahead of the PlayStation-based row of vertical-scrolling menus that Sony used to use.

The UI in Sony's 2014 lineup of Smart TVs.

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

The new interface is visual and fast, plus it has a couple of great convenience features: First, it doesn't minimize the screen when you call up the menu like so many "guide" interfaces do; instead your menus (whether they're TV channels or YouTube videos) appear along the bottom, with whatever you're watching remaining full-screen (see below).

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

And second, the TV includes infrared blasters for controlling your cable box, which isn't that innovative, but at least it lets you ditch your provider's UI with minimal disruption. Yes, the DVR is still a problem, but still.

The DVR notwithstanding, for owners of Sony's 2014 Smart TVs, PlayStation Now could be the final push they need to ditch their cable box UI permanently. Sony has made the service clean and convenient, with virtually no compromise on gameplay. We can't wait to see more.

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Topics: Apps and Software, Gaming, playstation, PlayStation Now, sony, Tech