PlayStation Now will soon only be available on the PlayStation 4 and Windows PC, it's been announced. Sony's oft-misunderstood cloud streaming solution will prevent registrations starting 15th March on the PlayStation 3, Vita, and PS Vita TV, as well as all Bravia and Samsung televisions. The service will subsequently cease to function on said platforms starting 15th August.

The platform holder says that by cutting down the number of devices that it needs to support, it can better improve the experience. Realistically, it's probably not making enough money from subscriptions on the aforementioned platforms to justify continued investment in them. Still, a big part of the service's sales pitch was gaming without a console, so it's strange to see the television support tugged.

It's probably fair to say that PlayStation Now hasn't enjoyed the best start-to-life so far. The service has been completely misinterpreted as some kind of backward compatibility solution, when that was clearly never really its intention. Moreover, it's been slow to evolve, and its price has always seemed like poor value for money given the selection of titles that it offers thus far.

That said, it is a pretty impressive piece of technology, and if the company can keep it afloat long enough, then there's a possibility it may well form the backbone of PlayStation in the faraway future, when the concept of gaming on consoles becomes antiquated. The challenge that Sony faces – and has faced since the start – is making the service compelling in the present, and it's still a problem that it hasn't really solved.

[source blog.eu.playstation.com]