PS5 cloud streaming coming to PlayStation Plus Premium this month
Sony has confirmed that PS5 cloud streaming is coming to Europe and North America this month, with Japan already having it, as it launched on October 16th there.
You might be a little confused, especially if you’ve used remote play on your phone to play a game on your PS5 before, but PS5 cloud streaming is a little different. For example, to remote play you need the game installed on your console already, whereas cloud streaming just lets you play straight away.
Only available on PS5 (no PC streaming here) and also only via the PlayStation Plus Premium plan, you can stream games directly to your PS5 as long as they fall under certain categories.
For example, on the official blog Sony clarifies that, while PS5 cloud streaming is available for:
- Original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PSP games, though Classic Catalog
- PS4 and PS5 games through Game Catalog
- PS5 games available as Game Trial
- Supported digital PS5 games from your game library
As you’d expect, you can’t stream disc-based games, and you can’t stream PlayStation VR2 titles. Sony adds that “Supported PS5 games available through the Monthly Games benefit will be available for streaming by PlayStation Plus Premium members as long as you redeem the title during the month it is offered”.
Confusingly, this comes ahead of the PlayStation Portal device, which is a remote play unit, and won’t support cloud streaming. Sony adds that “Save data and game progress is automatically synced between all devices via cloud storage, making it easy to switch seamlessly between local and streaming gameplay, and between multiple devices”, which is good.
For clarity sake, the blog also states that “Playing a locally downloaded PS5 game and streaming a supported PS5 game is a similar experience (determined by internet speeds), except save files are stored via cloud storage instead of locally on the PS5 console”.
