As live TV streaming services continue to increase prices and make viewers look toward lower-cost services, or return to cable altogether, Sony today announced that it's bowing out of the race completely. PlayStation Vue's servers will shut down for good on January 30, 2020, nearly 5 years after soft launching in March of 2015.
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According to Sony's Deputy President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, John Kodera, the company has decided to "remain focused" on its core gaming business and step away from OTT streaming services. "Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected," said Kodera.
We are very proud of what PlayStation Vue was able to accomplish. We had ambitious goals for how our service could change how people watch TV, showcasing PlayStation’s ability to innovate in a brand-new category within the Pay TV industry. We want to thank all of our customers, some of whom have been with us since PlayStation Vue’s launch in 2015.
PS4 owners will still be able to rent and purchase films and TV on the PlayStation Store, and the console will still support media apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime. The only thing going away is PlayStation Vue, which includes all of its connected apps, including those on iOS and tvOS.
In other live TV streaming news, AT&T this month announced that it would be increasing the price of its AT&T TV NOW grandfathered plans by $10 per month. Additionally, AT&T will increase the price of the new PLUS and MAX plan tiers by $15 per month, all starting on November 19, 2019 (via Cord Cutters News).
For the new tiers, this means that AT&T TV NOW will start at $65 per month for PLUS and increase to $85 per month for MAX. This is the second major price hike for the service in 2019, after another $10 per month increase back in March, when it was still called DirecTV Now.
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OK, got it scheduled ...Mark my words - 10 years from now, having all of your content in one place again (i.e. cable) without subscribing to 8 services to get all of the content you want.. will make cable look like a good deal again.
They simply ask too much for their content. The quality isn’t there for 90% of what they create, but they’ve had a dominant market position for so long they don’t appreciate having to compete.
Well, the era of broadcast TV has ended. Instead of adapting, they think they can charge as much as other streaming services for their single channel’s worth of content. It’s going to be a hard wake up call when they realize that won’t work.
PS Vue, like all the other “cable, but streaming” platforms, struggled because networks couldn’t wrap their heads around the price/benefit ratio consumers give their content. They think they can go it alone, that they just need to put their stuff out there and people will eventually sign up, but what happens when they find out they were wrong? Where do they turn to sell their content? I’d be scared of this new world if I were them...
To millennials, watching TV means Amazon Prime Video, HBO Now, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and the likes.
Sports was probably the only thing that kept people from leaving entirely.