Playstation Now adds downloads

Pretty neat!

We are excited to announce that starting today, you will be able to stream as well as download PlayStation Now games to your PS4 system so that you can play both locally and offline, all with a single subscription. Almost all PS4 games in the service, including Bloodborne, God of War 3 Remastered, NBA 2K16, and Until Dawn, will be available for download, in addition to the PS Now lineup of classic PS2 games remastered for PS4. This feature will be gradually rolled out to PS Now subscribers over the next couple of days, so if you don’t see the feature on your PS Now today, make sure to check back again soon.

Downloaded PS Now games will support all user-purchased DLCs, microtransactions, and add-ons, as well as PS4 Pro enhancements for subscribers using a PS4 Pro system. And remember, you do not need a PlayStation Plus membership for online multiplayer on PS Now – which stays the same for both streaming and downloaded games.

I'm well and truly behind on my PS4 backlog (which goes all the way back to Uncharted 4; I still haven't gotten past the second world in God of War), so I don't think I'll be picking up PSNow anytime soon, but the ability to download games and play them locally is a pretty big addition to the service. Edit: I know the Xbox service already acts like this, but there are fewer exclusives over there that I really want to get into.

The pricing is way too high IMO. If it were half the price it would be tempting but as someone who already owns over 200 PS4 games my backlog is big enough and I can Remote Play them for free.

So it's kind of just become the "Netflix of video games" service? Cool! The Xbox Gamepass has kind of become that, too, so I guess that idea has actually come to fruition.

How many people around here subscribe to these services, though? The "I have a backlog" discussion happens a fair bit around these parts, so I don't think most people really want a subscription service when they already have so much to choose from.

@justin258: We truly are blessed with abundance nowadays as gamers. Between Twitch, EA and Xbox Games With Gold I have a huge backlog of games. Granted these were all paid for in some way by me, so they aren't free, but they are included as services or subscriptions that I would use without the free games. Actually the EA on the house games were free, oh and GoG sometimes gives games away also. Either way, gone are the days where I have nothing to play. Instead I have the opposite problem where I look at the list and just scratch my head thinking where do I begin? I don't have game pass, or any of the "Netflix" for video games services like you asked. I have a hard enough time choosing what to play as it is.

That's cool, but would be nice if this service was officially available in more than like 8 countries in Europe, Sony :/ The rest of us also have good internet, I'd pay you if you let me. I'd love to stream some PS3 games. Maybe they'll actually bring it officially to other places now that downloads are a thing, for now, gamepass is a superior service and available in way way more places. (yeah I know I could technically go around the region blockade and just make an account to a fake adress in one of the supported countries but I'd rather not play around with that stuff)

Unfortunately it's the PS3 library that I would care about most on PSNow, and obviously this won't support those, so the value of this is greatly diminished for me.

I suppose if they expand the library enough it might be worth checking out at some point just to try out a bunch of games I might not otherwise. Being able to immediately download and try them is definitely an advantage over other services like Gamefly. I guess I could technically still do that with the streaming service, but it's really not an ideal way to experience a lot of those games.

Well I am getting forza horizon 4 at launch with gamepass instead of pay $80 canadian loonies.

Wow. Okay, that's a pretty solid offer then.

Hopefully this I will mean the service is rolled out more widely. Our poor internet in Australia means streaming was never a viable option here but maybe now that will change.

I saw this and immediately checked their line-up for Metal Gear and Silent Hill games.

Then I stopped caring.

My taste in games is a little too specific to get any real value from it, but the $99.00 for a full year special they have going right now is a pretty good deal.

thats neat but that service is still too expensive when you consider gamepass includes xbox one, 360 and first party games day 1 for just $10

Oh, it's the service that still isn't available over here and probably never will be. Granted, my internet is good enough that the games seemed to work ok when I made a US account to try it out, but that's still quite not as ideal as having the service over here too.

It allows licenses to lapse without completely annoying the consumer. Not that I'm entirely up to jumping in but there's going to be a point when my old consoles stop working.

This is great news. I hope they release more first party titles. For example, Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy.

Moreover, they should reach out to Konami. Why not have MGS 2-5 on this service?

Do we know if downloads work for the PC?

As someone who knows basically jack shit about PlayStation Now due to being on PC for the past three almost four years, that sounds great. I'm probably not going to dive in any time soon, but that's a good thing to know.