Playstation Now beta arriving this month, releasing this summer

During its press conference at CES, Sony announced Playstation Now, a game streaming service built upon the Gaikai tech they purchased in 2012. The service will begin beta testing this month, with the official US launch coming later this summer.

Playstation Now will hopefully solve some of the backwards compatibility problems of the PS4, as it will allow users to play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games on the new console. But the eventual goals are much more ambitious. The list of prospective features from the official Playstation Blog is as follows.

• Play video games instantly across multiple devices, similar to the way you might stream TV, movies, and music.
• Stream full games to all of your compatible PlayStation devices including PS4, PS3, and PlayStation Vita as well as non-PlayStation devices, beginning with 2014 BRAVIA TV models and expanding to numerous other Internet-connected devices.
• Always play the most updated version of your game. With games hosted in the cloud, you can take your game with you – just log in with your Sony Entertainment Network account on a compatible device and your games and saved progress will be easily available.

We’ll also be able to rent specific titles on a game by game basis, with a subscription fee providing access to a large swath of games. It’s currently unknown if Playstation Now will integrate in any way with Playstation Plus.