Confirmed: Sony will shut down PlayStation Vue early next year

[Shawn Knight]

In a nutshell: There will soon be one less competitor in the over-the-top Internet TV race. Sony Interactive Entertainment on Tuesday announced intentions to shut down the PlayStation Vue streaming service on January 30, 2020. A sale of the service was previously rumored but simply shutting it down seems like the worst-case scenario.

SIE Deputy President John Kodera said in a blog post announcing the closure that the highly competitive pay TV industry was slower to change than they initially expected. “Because of this, we have decided to remain focused on our core gaming business,” Kodera noted.

The executive added that they are very proud of what they accomplished with PlayStation Vue and thanked customers for their support over the years.

Reports surfaced late last week that Sony had hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch to explore the possibility of offloading the money-losing service. Sony didn’t mention anything about a sale in today’s announcement so it would seem that for now, that possibility is off the table and the service will simply cease to exist in any form come the end of next January.

That’s a bit of a shame, really, for both Sony and the streaming community as a whole. Cord cutting generated a lot of momentum in the middle part of the decade but progress has slowed considerably due to rising content costs and the emergence of standalone video platforms like Netflix and the pending arrival of Apple TV+ and Disney+.

Do you subscribe to an over-the-top service? Are you still with a traditional cable / satellite provider? Maybe you’ve cut the cord entirely? Let us know where you stand in late 2019 in the comments section below.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/82545-confirmed-sony-shut-down-playstation-vue-early-next.html

 

[scavengerspc]

And another heavily restricted DVR live tv service bites the dust.
Shame, Vue had some strong points.

Oh and putting Playstation in the name probably didn't help. I would bet a lot of folks didn't know it was a TV service.

 

[dirtyferret]

I've subscribed to Vue for 4-5 years. I believe it's the best cable like streaming service out there but that stupid decision to call it PlayStation Vue instead of Sony TV or Sony Vue killed it. Every time I tried to describe the service to someone their first words would always be "I don't have a PlayStation" even when I told them you don't need one.

 

[wiyosaya]

that the highly competitive pay TV industry was slower to change than they initially expected

IMO, this is the sign of yet another CEO with his head in the clouds of profit and blaming everyone else for his decision to chase a fad. As I see it, he has a complete lack of understanding what drives cord-cutters like myself.

At a minimum, the price on this was $49.99/mo. I would not pay that for any streaming service. I am paying about 40-percent of that for my streaming from Netflix, Hulu, and a pod cast of a show for my wife. Plus, I have OTA with DVR capabilities using Media Portal, and all of that is more than I can possibly watch. I will not pay more than twice as much for even more TV that I cannot possibly watch. Plus, to watch anything exclusive to these services, I'll wait for it to come to disk and borrow it from my local library.

 

[ckm88]

Nothing can really compete with Netflix and Hulu at this point. Disney + *may* bag up some of the market share but everything else is doomed to die off.

 

[Vanderkaum037]

I just subscribed to this last week. Disappointed that it's going away. I will say that the name is confusing as all hell.

 

[Slappy McPhee]

Its good they are exiting the market for them from a financial standpoint. Firstly, terrible naming led to a much smaller adoption rate than what it could have had. Secondly, the TV services landscape is becoming increasingly cluttered. I wouldn't ever subscribe to any of them personally. I have my Plex server which suits our family's needs fine. We have Prime strictly because it comes with the yearly shipping subscription. They are now all making enough loot to have their own original series and many of them are better than the traditional network offerings. I personally can't stand commercials and even Prime Video started sneaking them in months ago.

 

[ZedRM]

I've subscribed to Vue for 4-5 years. I believe it's the best cable like streaming service out there but that stupid decision to call it PlayStation Vue instead of Sony TV or Sony Vue killed it. Every time I tried to describe the service to someone their first words would always be "I don't have a PlayStation" even when I told them you don't need one.

Maybe if they had called it "Playstation TVue" it would have worked.

 

[tvirishman]

Too bad...Its the best OTT product on the market that few people know about and I for one would be willing to pay a bit more for. I did a lot of front end research on OTT options as well as linear before I purchased. This included subscribing to services and testing the functionality, features and content. I also tested the OTT services on ROKU and Fire devices as well as PC and Phone. PSVue and YouTubeTV were the best to options on the market if you still want live network programming including local channels and sports. I went with PSVue due to the ability to play back on both Fire and Roku as well as a small programming advantage. We switched from DirecTV and I never want to go back. The ability to watch PSVue when, where and on what device makes DirecTV a non-option; and then there's the price. I will likely switch to YouTubeTV when PSVue goes dark, but will research again at that time.

As others have stated Sony's choice of brand is foolish and their lack of marketing is ridiculous. Of course its going to fail if you don't put some real effort, strategy and $ behind it. Its a great product that very few people are aware of. As an example I brought my Amazon Fire on a 16 guy golf trip so we could watch the recorded Vikings game at the end of our golf round. No one had heard of it, but everyone wanted to know about it once I used it for the game playback.