Sony is great PlayStation now update this week is one of the best in a long time, with Marvel’s Avengers and Borderlands 3 both part of the lineup, showcasing the company’s commitment to the subscription service. However, it is also a demonstration of how messy the manufacturer’s membership model is, despite both titles appearing free PS4 to PS5 upgrades, you can only play the latest generation version.
There was some confusion about this earlier in the week, so we decided to test it out. Our PS Now subscription on PS5 allowed us to stream the PS4 versions of any of the aforementioned titles. You can also download the games to your hard drive, but you can nothing but download the latest generation versions; if you want to upgrade to the PS5 edition, you have to pay for the game effectively.
PS Now, as it is now, is a PS4 service – no PS5 games are included. However, we feel that this once again underscores the messy transition that Sony’s console is going through. With both Marvel’s Avengers and Borderlands 3 offering native PS5 versions with free upgrades, many PS Now subscribers had rightly assumed that they would also get access to the next-gen ports. That is not the case.
It’s still a good update to the subscription service, but it might be a reminder that the platform holder needs to get back to the drawing board a bit here. Despite efforts to improve the quality of PS Now – which, to be fair, has been somewhat successful – it still doesn’t feel like the company is taking the service seriously. Hopefully, by the end of the year, the organization will have redesigned everything so that such misunderstandings will cease to exist.