Rentals Temporarily Appear on PS Store

Yesterday, something very interesting happened to a few users browsing the PlayStation Store. They found rental options for the game Catherine. One user took a screenshot of the page and tweeted it to the site PSNStores, which then checked it out.

Catherine displayed options for 1-day rentals, 7-day rentals, and 30-day rentals. According to the article from PSNStores, if you attempted to choose one of the options, it would allow you to check out, but the rental would not appear in the download list. However, it was still added to the list of transactions.

The rental options have since vanished from the PlayStation Store, so we can’t find anything else out. However, we can speculate that this is related to PlayStation Now, which will allow players to stream games. The closed beta for PlayStation Now is currently underway, so perhaps we can look forward to official news in the new future. E3? Even sooner, at GDC? We’ll keep you updated.

Some players are cynical about the prospect of a rental service, feeling that companies would refuse to be a part of it because they would see fewer sales. On the other hand, as we noted in the past, that argument applies equally well to PS+, which frequently sees a selection of strong titles. Would you rent a game to stream on your PlayStation console?