Well, those of us excited by the prospect of a Vita TV or 2K Vita announcement for the US at this year’s CES are just going to have to wait longer. Nothing. Nada. Zip. While disappointing, Sony did have some rather cool news for gamers in the form of PlayStation Now. Launching a limited US beta at the end of this month, Sony’s cloud based game streaming service, PlayStation Now, powered by Gaikai, is set to launch sometime this summer. From the limited info given, it sounds like PlayStation Now will feature a rental service along with a subscription service. Hopefully those of us that have already doled out obscene amounts of money for years of PSN+ will catch a break when also subscribing to the new streaming service.
However, knowing Sony, we probably won’t be catching any. PlayStation Now will be available not only for the PS4 and Vita, but also for the PlayStation Family of tablets and phones, from the sound of things. Which makes the lack of a US announcement for Sony’s ‘deck of cards sized console’ the Vita TV even more depressing. With PlayStation Now, PS4 Remote Play, DualShock 4 support and all the features of a Smart TV, who wouldn’t want to buy a $99 Vita TV? Apparently Sony thinks the answer to that question is nobody in the West… If you are lucky enough to be in Vegas at CES this week, you can stream the blockbuster PS3 hit, “The Last of US” to the PS Vita to try out PlayStation Now. It was also noted that the PS4 has sold 4.2 million units as of December 28th, trouncing Xbox One by 1.2 million units worldwide, and the PS4 isn’t even out in Japan yet, nor can you find them on store shelves anywhere, while you can pickup an Xbox One at WalMart or GameStop right now. Guess that means the PS4 has a nice early head start over the Xbox in this generation’s console war.
In the wearable computing department, Sony has also announced a bracelet called the SmartBand SWR10 that links up with an app called Lifelog. Sony claims with a click of a button on the bracelet you can record memorable events and they will be bookmarked in your Lifelog app. What it records wasn’t made clear, but what is clear to me is Sony is making the NSA’s job of spying on us even easier with this device and app. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the sound of having my every movement and interaction with other people recorded and stored in some server sounds very 1984 to me. SmartBand and Lifelog can be viewed here.
The rest of the show was a bore, unless you are the “I have 10’s of 1000’s of dollars in disposable income to blow on a new 4K TV or Camcorder” types, of which I am not. You can check out Sony’s other CES stuff here.
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