Sony’s PlayStation Vue, one of the first services to offer streaming live TV over the internet, is shutting down today. The service launched in March 2015, offering live and on-demand content from more than 85 channels, including many local broadcast stations, to select U.S. markets. Over the years, Vue expanded across the U.S. as it added more channels, more local stations and features like multi-channel viewing on the same screen, among other innovations.
But Vue failed to catch on with a broader audience, despite — or perhaps, because of — its integration with Sony’s PS3 and PS4 devices.
Sony’s decision to name the service “PlayStation Vue” didn’t do it any favors from a branding perspective. Many consumers, if they heard of it at all, assumed it was something only available to PlayStation console owners.
The company also took too long to expand the service to include popular platforms many cord-cutters were using at the time to watch streaming services. It added support for Amazon Fire TV by November 2015, but full support for Google Chromecast, as well as Apple TV and Roku — the latter of which grew to become the most popular connected TV platform in the U.S. — didn’t arrive until the following year. That limited Vue’s availability at a time when people were beginning to look for new streaming options.
Meanwhile, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue’s rival from Dish, launched around the same time as Vue, offering support for mobile, web, Fire TV, Nexus Player (Android TV), Xbox, Roku and smart TVs from day one. It also kept the name “Dish” out of its branding, in order to not confuse potential users into thinking they needed to be a Dish customer to subscribe to the new streaming service.
Despite poor branding, PlayStation Vue could have overcome consumer confusion if Sony had made any meaningful investment in marketing Vue, growing its content library or even developing a core of must-watch original programs you could get anywhere else. It did not.
Sony also had a hard time keeping up with the changing economics of offering live TV channels over the internet. This was, in part, because it had less clout than bigger streaming players when it came to negotiating deals.
In 2016, Vue dropped all Viacom-owned channels (including Comedy Central, Spike and MTV) to reduce its programming costs and maintain its existing pricing. In 2017, it dropped its cheapest tier (the “Slim” package). In 2018, it suffered a major blow to its local lineup when it lost all Sinclair-owned local stations, impacting customers in nearly two dozen markets. PlayStation Vue also raised prices in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to help it cover the cost of content.
Although PlayStation Vue had one of the better sports lineups among streamers, its most expensive plan grew to $85/month — a price that no longer looked like much of a bargain compared to a traditional pay-TV subscription.
At the same time, Vue was challenged by several newcomers that had more marketing dollars to throw at their own live TV services, including AT&T’s DirecTV Now (now AT&T TV Now), Google’s YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV. At launch, AT&T even gave away free Fire TV Stick and Apple TV devices to new customers who signed up, and Google (Alphabet) was clearly subsidizing its YouTube TV service, which was only $35/month when it debuted.
FuboTV soon arrived to woo sports fans, and several new ad-supported movie and TV hubs followed, like The Roku Channel and Amazon’s IMDb TV, both of which integrated directly with their proprietary media player hardware and software, Roku and Fire TV.
Sony also had a poorly thought-out streaming strategy.
It already ran the older service Crackle, which streamed many Sony shows and movies. And it had licensed much of its content to other streamers. But it didn’t seem to know what to do with Crackle, eventually spinning it out into a joint venture with Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (yes, really), which assumed control and dumbly rebranded it as Crackle Plus — even though “Plus” had been a term attached only to subscription-based streamers like Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus.
In early 2019, eMarketer estimated PlayStation Vue had grown only to 800,000 subscribers — putting it behind YouTube TV, DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV and Sling TV.
Later in the year, Sony began shopping Vue around to different buyers, including fuboTV, but couldn’t make a deal. One problem was that Vue didn’t have any proprietary technology and ran on the Disney-owned streaming platform, BAMTech. Additionally, many of its content deals were tied up with other media companies that wouldn’t transfer to a new owner, which only left its team and Vue’s subscriber base as major assets. And rival streamers believed they could just pick up the customers Vue drops, without having to buy them via an acquisition.
Today, all of Sony’s missteps have finally caught up to them, and PlayStation Vue is closing for good.
The service is being discontinued today, January 30, 2020. Customer signup is deactivated. Vue is recommending subscribers head over to YouTube TV instead.
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