“How does the PlayStation Now beta work?” is a question that fewer and fewer PS4 owners have to ask now that the open beta’s available to all. Having gone live yesterday, the open beta is bound to see a lot more testers over the weekend and throughout the next several weeks, but there are plenty of people who still haven’t tried it out. Fortunately, Sony has released a video overview of the PS Now program, including some specifics on how it works.
The PlayStation Now beta is only available to PS4 owners at the moment, but the reason’s quite logical: it’s designed to stream PS3 games on a PS4. If you own a PS3 but not a PS4, there’s little need to stream games to your primary console.
With that said, the PlayStation Now system is designed as a game-rental service, so there may be a time when PS Now opens up for PS3 owners too. In addition, over time Sony may explore adding PS2 and perhaps even original PlayStation games to the PS Now service, in which case PS3 owners may be interested in learning more.
Hence the video below. Sony knows you’ve got questions, whether you own a PS4 and just haven’t yet tried the PS Now beta, or whether you’re a PS3 owner who simply can’t answer the question “how does the PlayStation Now beta work?” because the service isn’t yet available for your console.
This video explains specfically how the PlayStation Now beta is integrated into the PlayStation Store, how the interface works, and how to test your broadband connection for PS Now to see if you’ll have a good game-streaming experience. In addition, the video shows more than one dozen of the games that are currently available as part of the PlayStation Now open beta.
And yes, before you ask, the video also shows pricing. For instance, when showing the game Darksiders on PS Now, the video clearly shows that game offers a four-hour rental for $2.99, a 7-day rental for $5.99, a 30-day rental for $7.99 and a 90-day rental for $14.99.
The PS Now video also shows how quickly gamers can begin streaming (and playing) a game after initiating the rental. Check it out:
