Playstation Vue Given Three Month Death Sentence
In 2015 Sony turned their interest toward the growing cord-cutters market by launching Playstation Vue in select trial locations. Like Sling TV before it, Playstation Vue bypasses the expensive cable companies by letting consumers stream their favorite cable channels over Wi-Fi, and features an unlimited DVR that saves recordings for up to one month. Now forget all that because the service is dead.
Or, rather, it’s been given a terminal diagnosis. A mass E-mail was sent to all subscribers this morning:
After more than four years of innovating in the Pay TV industry, we regret to inform you that Sony Interactive Entertainment is discontinuing the PlayStation Vue service on January 30, 2020. We appreciate your support of our pioneering live TV service over this time.
PlayStation Vue will continue to deliver live, On Demand and DVR programs until the service discontinuation date of January 30, 2020.
Subscribers will receive their final charge for PlayStation Vue in the month of December. Active paid subscribers will not be charged for the service after December 31, 2019.
It may not be surprising to anyone who’s been watching the market. There are now several streaming cable services out there, and PS Vue has never been able to gain much of that consumer pie, despite being one of the better and more polished offerings. If you want my opinion, it was the use of the word “Playstation” in the product’s name that held it back — everybody thought you needed a game console to use it, when it was actually available on Roku, Chromecast and other such platforms.
According to THR, for the past few months Sony has been looking for a buyer for PS Vue that they could offload the service onto. But there have been no takers, and so they’re shutting the project down. For those looking for a new stream-cable provider, you can compare the existing services, and the channels each one offers, on this page. It’s debatable which one is the best, but DirectTV/AT&T Now is often considered the worst.