PlayStation Now Now Offers Downloadable Games, But There’s a Catch

While PlayStation Now has been a dependable cloud-based service for enjoying games from the past, some players haven't been too fond of its limitations. Sony is hoping to alleviate that with a new feature for the service, but it's still not quite where fans want it to be. Not yet, anyway.

In a new PlayStation Blog post today, Sony confirmed that not only can you stream games on the service, but now you can download and play them offline as well. However, the company makes it very clear that this only includes some PlayStation 4 games, as well as PlayStation 2-to-PlayStation 4 titles. Yep, PlayStation 3 games are off the table, it seems.

"Almost all PS4 games in the service, including Bloodborne, God of War 3 Remastered, NBA 2K16, and Until Dawn, will be available for download, in addition to the PS Now lineup of classic PS2 games remastered for PS4. This feature will be gradually rolled out to PS Now subscribers over the next couple of days, so if you don't see the feature on your PS Now today, make sure to check back again soon," the company notes.

It is a step forward for the service, but not quite the big one the company may be imagining. After all, a majority of popular games on the PlayStation Now front are from the PS3 library, including Red Dead Redemption and Mortal Kombat. More than likely, the company may have figured that it was more trouble to get them to work offline on PlayStation 4 than it was worth.

Still, a lot of fans have been critical of the move, hoping that all games on the service would be downloadable. You can see some of the tweets regarding this below:

sooooooo is this PSNow download news the early answer from Playstation to Game Pass 🤔 They sorely need PS3 download support and the entire 1st party PS4 lineup and even then if I own a PS3 game it should be free to play on PS4, make that happen at PSX 👏🏾

— Parris (@vicious696) September 20, 2018

This is cool but NO PS3 games? 🙆🏻‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/6oPohHebyK

— Spider-Dan (@DeeLiRiouS13) September 20, 2018

If y’all don’t got this it’s a automatic no pic.twitter.com/1a9gdMUIOX

— Mr. TaleDo (@king_Vontre) September 20, 2018

A few folks have noted that the architecture of PS4 prevents PlayStation 3 games from being able to be downloaded and run on the service...but that isn't stopping fans from being somewhat upset over the lack of an option.

So if you want to play the PS3 classics...wel, you'll need to be a subscriber. Or, you know, get a PlayStation 3.

PlayStation Now is available now for PC and PlayStation 4.