Sony is great PlayStation Now this week’s update is one of the best in a long time, with Marvel’s Avengers and Borderlands 3 both part of the lineup, showing the company’s commitment to the subscription service. However, it is also a demonstration of how confusing the manufacturer’s association model is, free PS4 updates for PS5, you will only be able to play the latest generation version.
There was some confusion regarding this earlier in the week, so we decided to try it out. Using our PS Now subscription on PS5, we were able to stream the PS4 versions of each of the titles mentioned. You can also download games to your hard drive, but you can only download the latest generation versions; if you want to “upgrade” to the PS5 edition, you will need to pay for the game effectively.
PS Now, as it is now, it is a PS4 service – there are no PS5 games included in it. However, we feel that this again underlines the messy transition that the Sony console is going through. With Marvel’s Avengers and Borderlands 3 offering native versions of the PS5 with free upgrades, many PS Now subscribers rightly assumed they would also have access to the next generation ports. This is not the case.
It’s still a good update for the subscription service, but it might be a reminder that the platform holder needs to get back to the drawing board a little bit here. Despite efforts to improve the quality of PS Now – which, to be fair, has had some success – it still does not appear that the company is taking the service seriously. Hopefully, by the end of the year, the organization will have reformulated everything, so that misunderstandings like this cease to exist.