Sony has been toying with streaming video games for some time, and has made clear progress with its new PlayStation Now service. Not to be confused with the cable-streaming PlayStation Vue, PlayStation Now streams PlayStation 3 games to any PS3, PS4, PS Vita, or PS TV, as well as some connected Sony HDTVs. The games are loaded on Sony's servers, which take your command inputs and send back the audio and video of whatever you're playing over the Internet. It's currently in open beta, and for $19.99 per month you can access a library of over 100 PS3 games on this not-quite-officially-launched service. It works impressively well, and while the library doesn't have any really recent killer AAA releases, there are enough excellent games to justify the subscription.

The Library

To get started, all you need is to download the PS Now app from the PSN Store on your PlayStation device, and sign up for a subscription through your Sony Entertainment Network account. The subscription library features many excellent titles from the PS3, but you won't find any big new releases. Standouts include Uncharted 1 and 2, Infamous 1 and 2, Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, XCOM: Enemy Within, and Batman: Arkham City. There are also several big game series from the PS2 era that are available in their HD re-release versions on PlayStation Now, like God of War 1, 2, and Ascension, Sly Cooper Collection (with the most recent, PS3-based Thieves in Time), ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. It's not a huge list, but with over 100 games available you'll likely get your money's worth out of it.

The PlayStation Now app looks a lot like the PSN Store, with games arranged in genres and sub-categories that break out into large panels and then smaller grids of tiles. Any game you load will appear in the My PS Now Games section, and they'll also show up in your PS4 main menu as if they were any non-PS Now PS4 game.

Playing Games

Performance highly depends on your network speed, and you can't expect a good gameplay experience if you don't have a solid cable or fiber Internet connection. Sony recommends a connection that stays steadily between 5 and 12 Mbps, but always err on the side of faster if you can. On our test lab's fiber line (which is rated at 150 Mbps, but usually tests between 80 and 100 Mbps), PlayStation Now looks and plays very well.