Number of PlayStation Now members has doubled after price reduction and arrival of top games
Sony’s PlayStation Now game subscription has 2.2 million paid subscribers. Six months ago there were about 1 million. The number of subscribers is growing much faster since Sony lowered the price and added blockbusters at the end of last year.
Between the end of October 2019 and the end of April 2020, 1.2 million paid subscribers were added, or an average of 200,000 per month. In the period between the end of March 2019 and October of the same year, the number of subscribers grew by 300,000, or about 43,000 per month. Sony shares the figures in a presentation about the company’s strategy.
The strong growth coincides with changes Sony made to its game subscription service. In October last year, the Japanese group lowered the price from 15 euros to 10 euros per month and blockbusters have been added since then. Sony uses a rotation method for this. Top games will remain available through the service for three months.
At 2.2 million, the total number of PlayStation Now subscribers is considerably lower than the 10 million subscribers Microsoft has for its Game Pass subscription. However, Microsoft regularly stunts prices, whereby new customers get access for three months for one euro, for example. It is not known how many subscribers pay the full price.
PlayStation Now is available for the PlayStation 4 and PC. With the PC version, only the games that can be played via streaming are available. In this way, exclusive Sony games can also be played on the PC. The top titles can be downloaded on the PlayStation 4 and can then be played locally. Older games work via streaming.
In the presentation, Sony also reports that the use of the Remote Play function is increasing considerably. In December 2019, the number of monthly active users was 2.5 times higher than a year earlier. The feature allows PlayStation owners to stream games from their console to a PC or smartphone. Sony also emphasized the speed of the SSD in the PlayStation 5. According to the manufacturer, the new console can process data a hundred times faster than the PS4.