RIP, PlayStation Vue.
The cloud-based TV service is officially going dark today. From now on, visitors to its website or apps will see the message, “PlayStation Vue is no longer available. Thank you for your support.”
Owner Sony announced shutdown plans last October, saying in a blog post, “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.”
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Despite sharing a name with Sony’s famous game console, Vue was not part of its gaming business. Sony did, though, first shop the service out primarily to its gaming customers–at soft launch back in 2014, Vue brought content from 75 partner networks exclusively to PlayStation console owners in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Vue rolled out to the rest of the U.S. in 2016, and eventually was available to watch (with a starting price point of $49.99) via iOS and Android apps and connected TV devices like Roku, Google’s Chromecast, Amazon’s Fire TV, and Apple TV. Partnered networks and channels included The CW, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Disney’s core channel as well as subsidiaries ESPN and Discovery. Vue was also the exclusive launch partner for gaming digital network Machinima in 2015.
Despite all these offerings, Vue topped out at around 800,000 subscribers, experts estimate. For comparison, similar service Hulu with Live TV (launched in 2017) has more than 2 million subscribers, and YouTube TV (also launched in 2017) has at least one million.
Vue’s closure doesn’t take Sony entirely out of the streaming business, however. It still has a minority stake in Crackle Plus, a revamped version of ad-supported Crackle, which Sony bought for $65 million in 2006. The majority of Crackle Plus is owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment thanks to a deal done last year, but Sony subsidiary New Media Services is providing its backend tech, and subsidiary Sony Pictures Television is licensing content for Crackle to stream.
