For those who remember the days leading up to the launch of the PS4 – and by extension the Xbox One – today’s announcement will definitely elicit a heavy sense of irony. This is because PlayStation has announced what it calls Live TV on PS5, at least in the US market. And it’s really just what it says on the tin: watch ad-supported shows on the console, with content provided by Sony Pictures Television to its Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) counterpart.
On the PlayStation Blog, SIE says that US owners of the console can access this Live TV on PS5 from the Media Tab. The option should immediately be present without any downloading necessary. Hit that, followed by “Sign In With My PlayStation Account”. Once that’s done, “more than 100 live channels and a growing selection of on-demand entertainment including news, sports, movies, TV shows, anime and more” will become available for viewing.
For now, this is a US-only thing, with plans to expand to Canada already in progress. For markets beyond those, the company says that it will “continue to explore additional regions”. That’s usually bogged down by licensing deals, publishing rights, and all sorts of similar red tape. With all that in mind, it would not be wise to hold your breath for this feature to land on our shores.
As mentioned earlier, the irony is palpable to those who remember the first official reveals of both the PS4 and Xbox One. Microsoft essentially doomed its own console to failure by trying to market its gaming console as a multimedia machine, as well as introducing all sorts of excessive DRM features, while PlayStation kept it simple and focused on videogames, along with that now infamous and ironic jab about sharing games. Now, with this announcement and the declaration that it is killing physical games in 2028, it seems as if SIE is going beyond not learning from the mistakes of the competition and actively copying them instead.
(Source: PlayStation)
