Ian Dean STREAMING GAMES WILL BE THE BEATING HEART OF YOUR GAMING LIFE. BETTER GET USED TO IT.

Streaming is the future, and PS Now is your training wheels

One weekend back in 2012 I decided to treat myself to a new game and figured I’d try out this new-fangled ‘digital download’ business. Selecting Lego Batman 2, and paying more than the shop price despite not having a disc or any shiny packaging to show for it, I hit download… and waited for two days for my blocky fun to install.

Despite my first brush with digital being slow, I’m still an advocate of the process. I can’t remember the last time I bought a physical copy of a game, preferring to hit Download and wait an hour for my new game to drip down the digital pipe. So I have no fears for a potential digital-only streaming future.

In fact, why wait until PS5 rolls along (which may or may not be a thing, and may or may not feature streaming) when we already have PS Now? The often-maligned streaming service is the closest thing we have to a Netflix for games, and it’s hidden away on your PS4.

NOW AND THEN

The last year has seen Sony ramp up support for PS Now, with new titles added monthly. For a quarter of the price of one brand-new game you get access to over 650 classic – and, let’s be honest, not-so-classic – PS2, PS3, and PS4 ‘hits’. It’s the Revels of gaming: for every yummy Red Dead Redemption there’s a coffee-flavoured Primal. But you can just spit it out and bite into something else.

Quibbles over connection issues are relevant. We don’t all have access to super-fast and reliable fibre optic internet – gamers in rural areas often endure really awful connections – but if I was capable of waiting for two days to play Lego Batman 2 in digital download’s infancy we should all be able to cope with the occasional dropout to glimpse the future of gaming. Besides, if rumours are to believed PS Now could be getting a download option in the near future, which, as Netflix has found, will be a huge leveller.

The infrastructure we need is not perfect, then, but the road ahead is clear, and streaming will be the dominant way we play our games in the years ahead. Like it or not, the future is here and (PS) now.