Sony's new game pass will affect how we stream PlayStation games on PC

rockpapershotgun.com:

Sony today announced they're overhauling PlayStation Now, their subscription service which lets us play some older PlayStation games on PC via cloud gaming. They're merging it with their PlayStation Plus service and adding a giant library of games as some sort of multi-tiered mega-Game Pass doodad. It's not clear how exactly this will change things for people who are already using PS Now to play PlayStation games on PC, but it sounds like maaaybe they'll add Marvel's Spider-Man, at least? For now, they're vague about the whole thing.

Sony's announcement explains they're merging PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now into one service with three tiers. PS Plus is currently the subscription service which offers access to online multiplayer (yes, in the year of our Molyneux 2022, you have to pay for that) plus a rolling selection of 'free' games, while PS Now is the cloud gaming service which lets you play a selection of games without downloading them or even having a PlayStation. PS Now is how you can play games like Bloodborne on PC right now (albeit in murky, laggy, vaporous form).

The big change is that the higher Plus tiers will include access to libraries of games from across decades of PlayStation consoles, basically making it more like Microsoft's Game Pass.

The highest new tier, PlayStation Plus Premium, is the only one which matters to us here on PC. Premium includes access to cloud gaming, making it a replacement for PlayStation Now. For a fee of £13.49 monthly, £39.99 quarterly, or £99.99 annually (that's $17.99/$49.99/$119.99 in USD, or €16.99/€49.99/€119.99), Plus Premium will offer cloud streaming access to a library of hundreds of PlayStation 4, PS3, PS2, PSone, and PSP games. While the Plus library includes