Pachter: Saying Sony Has "A Lot of First-Party Content Is a Stretch"

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http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=&publisher=1535&platform=PS3&genre=&minSales=0&results=200

Number of PS3 SCE titles for which VGC has recorded >1 sales = 159

Total number of PS3 SCE titles in total listed by VGC = 468.

Plenty to go on, and that's just the HD generation. If we look at PS2 and PS1 there will be close to or even more than 1000 games just from SCE that could theoretically go onto PS Now on day 1. I know there are a ton of PS3 and PS2 (and maybe even PS1) games that I'd like to play (or at least try) but I wouldn't buy, ro that are not available for me to buy (and in the case of PS1 and PS1 I no longer have either console so PS Now would be the only way I could play.

AND I bloody well want to play Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3, but I don't want to play on PSP. If I can get it through PS Now via PS4, rather than having to buy Vita TV and download then that's probably how I'd play those games.

And if all of Sony's 1st party games on PS4 are available through PS Now from day 1, then that makes it an even more valuable service. Not that I think Sony will do that, they will probably make PS4 titles available through PS Now after 6 months or a year depending on how they sell.

No, this is Pachter merely trying to justify his earlier misguided statement saying that PS Now is a dumb idea. It's a great idea and it permanently deals with the "problem" of [the lack of] backwards compatibility.

3rd parties will come on board. It's no skin off their nose to make legacy titles available through this service, including PS4 titles after a couple of years. And it's money for nothing. Why wouldn't 3rd parties allow thier PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP titles to be made available? It's really only the annual release clones (CoD, Fifa, Madden, etc) that wouldn;t be worth releasing. So even in this Pachter is wrong. Companies wiill be interested in any revenue streams they can get, as long as they don't think people will avoid buying current gen games because they're all playing the older gen titles on PS Now. Which I don't think will be the case. Sony has a good business case for 3rd parties.

Personally I think the smorgasbord subscription model is the future for gaming. Onlive was, as is usually the case with pioneers, the guinea pig doomed to failuyre because they came along too soon. But it is the future. Pachter is still living in the past. That means the death of the specialist video game store, and eventually the death of the dedicated gaming console. And I'm quite fine with that.