Today during their CES 2014 keynote, Sony announced PlayStation Now. This is the result of their partnership with Gaikai that will allow gamers to rent or subscribe to classic PlayStation titles and play them on the PlayStation 4, Vita, smartphones, or even a Sony TV.

A closed beta is slated to begin by the end of January. A full roll out of the service is expected to happen by this Summer.

The service will allow you to play games from Sony's rich past including PlayStation 3 titles like The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, or God of War to just about any modern Sony device that you own. In addition, Sony hinted that this service may be available on other, non-Sony devices in the future.

The Verge had some hands on time with the service at CES.
For our demo, we first booted up God of War. The game's loading time left a bit to be desired, but once it was running, things went on without a hitch. Yes, there's a slightly perceptible lag between button presses and the corresponding action onscreen, but we still managed to slay numerous enemies in God of War's brutal style without it being a problem.

The Last of Us was just as impressive. In terms of graphics, the experience isn't perfectly on par with what you'd get from a PS3, but Sony emphasized that everything will depend on your bandwidth. When you start PlayStation Now, it will perform a connection check and warn you if your session will be hampered by slow data speeds. We noticed some visual artifacts on screen, but the opportunity to play fully fledged PS3 game on a TV screen sans any console should make up for that in the minds of many. And it delivers at least some form of backwards compatibility to PS4 owners.