We’ve had Onlive, and now Sony enters the game streaming market with its newly announced Playstation Now for TVs, consoles, tablets and phones.  Sony has revealed that the service is up and running now, showcasing The Last of Us running on the PSVita for example. The full public service will roll out in North America as early as this summer on PS4 and PS3 with PAL territories having access at a later date – a Beta is planned for the end of this month. Using the same technology as Onlive, Playstation Now  has users operate games remotely using their chosen device whilst the data is transmitted at high speed over the Internet.  From our experience with Onlive, the experience is pretty fluid but does show some artefacts when the connection isn’t operating at full capacity.  Hopefully Sony will have ironed out such issues with their Gaikai service it purchased.

Playstation Now will offer full games to rent or purchase a subscription to play much like OnLive and will include all the extras such as cloud based saves, messages and achievements/trophies.

Leveraging Gaikai’s advanced cloud-based technology, PlayStation Now will allow you to:

• Play video games instantly across multiple devices, similar to the way you might stream TV, movies, and music.
• Stream full games to all of your compatible PlayStation devices including PS4, PS3, and PlayStation Vita as well as non-PlayStation devices, beginning with 2014 BRAVIA TV models and expanding to numerous other Internet-connected devices.
• Always play the most updated version of your game. With games hosted in the cloud, you can take your game with you – just log in with your Sony Entertainment Network account on a compatible device and your games and saved progress will be easily available.