Sony announced over on the PlayStation Blog on October 29th, 2019 that PlayStation Vue was shutting down on January 30th, 2020.
SIE deputy president, John Kodera, wrote…
“Today we are announcing that we will shut down the PlayStation Vue service on January 30, 2020. Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected. Because of this, we have decided to remain focused on our core gaming business.”
This comes shortly after rumors spread that Sony was looking to sell PlayStation Vue to another company. It’s still possible that Sony sold the technology but is shutting down the PlayStation service.
It’s also possible that they attempted to sell the PlayStation Vue service but no one was willing to buy it and so they decided to cut their losses and pull out.
The post from Kodera is short and sweet and straight to the point, with no additional lollygagging or prattling to fill out the news.
As noted in a report by Hollywood Reporter, the shut down notice comes just after Disney and Sony inked a deal back in September, where PlayStation Vue was supposed to carry Disney’s offerings, including FX and National Geographic.
Since opening in 2014, PlayStation Vue had offered up to 80 different channels and had an increasingly steep subscription price, which lowered its growth potential greatly to just 800,000 subscribers.
It’s interesting to see some of Sony’s tertiary ventures dry up and go away during a time where they’re in the midst of a generational console change. With the PlayStation 5’s launch looming in 2020, it’s not a good sign to have all your eggs in one basket because if the launch doesn’t go over well or the games aren’t well-received, or there’s a dearth of noteworthy titles at launch, it could cripple Sony permanently.
Not having a backup in the television streaming market is an extra notch against them, and now they have to hope that the PS5 is as big a success as the PS4, otherwise it could spell the end of Sony.
