While not as broadly advertised as other cloud gaming services, Sony does have a bonafide cloud gaming offering of their own. The service is available to anyone with a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. Users can stream most games available as part of that subscription.
The major current limitation of the service is that you can only use it to play cloud games on an actual PlayStation (PS4 or PS5) or via a Windows desktop app.
We recently reported that Sony appeared to be ramping up its efforts in the cloud gaming space. And, it looks like we now have the first tangible changes in this direction to talk about!
As part of a blog on the one year celebration of PS Plus, Sony announced that they will begin streaming PlayStation 5 titles via the cloud soon. Up to this point, the available cloud titles has been from the PS3 and PS4 collection.
Stream Games You Own
Perhaps the most exciting part of the blog was the reveal that you will soon be able to stream (supported) games that you own that are not part of the subscription as well.
Here is what they said:
We’re currently testing cloud streaming for supported PS5 games – this includes PS5 titles from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Game Trials, as well as supported digital PS5 titles that players own. When this feature launches, cloud game streaming for supported PS5 titles will be available for use directly on your PS5 console.
The ability to stream games you own is something that the Xbox team promised awhile back as well. But, Xbox has yet to deliver it. We’ll see if Sony ends up getting this out to users first.
The Big Limitation
The major limitation to all this is the limited number of devices that you can stream to. The quote above makes it seem like you will only be able to stream to an actual PlayStation 5 device. This would limit access even more than the current offering.
As we reported, it also seems like cloud streaming won’t support the new PlayStation Q handheld at launch, even though this seems like a no-brainer feature to have on the device.
We’ll have to wait and see how this device support evolves over time. We are certainly expecting it to expand.
