Playstation Plus, the subscription that no one wants and that everyone will take

Playstation Plus

In recent weeks there has been a lot of talk about Playstation Plus, subscription services and how and when it is right to completely change the strategy of a company that sells "software" to switch to a subscription service that does not lose quality and that always maintains constant flow of outputs. In the specific case of the playstation, it was obviously in the air that a change was coming, but not because Xbox was doing the same thing, quite the contrary. Playstation Plus was a service that carried with it an now old subscription philosophy, the son of a generation of players who changed their habits and who in most cases continued to keep their subscription active for those 3/4 games ( valid) that were given away during the year.

Sony's choice of not wanting to bet too much on its streaming service (Playstation Now) was in fact a question mark for everyone, and above all for everyone those people like me, who had tried the service and, albeit with some perplexity, had not rejected it in full. There is obviously a clear distinction to be made between the types of gamers who approach the service in question and, above all, not everyone is willing to pay a subscription service for "video games". In short, in my opinion, the mass audience is not yet ready to receive the same treatment as the film market.



Photo Playstation

A new life for Playstation Plus

But before starting with the digression on why the service, why a company like Sony should or should not "do things" , I want to dwell a little on this new life of the Playstation Plus, also to reach all those people who may not yet know what will happen in June. - th_gamedivision_d_mh3_1 slot id: th_gamedivision_d_mh3 "); } Until now we have mainly known the Playstation plus as a subscription service to access free content, exclusive discounts and mainly to access the online services made available by Sony. Whether linked to online gaming, or cloud bailouts, the service set up by the Japanese company back in 2010 now gathers almost 50 million subscribers and certainly represents a fertile ground for building a new service and a new "array" of players ready to welcome the news that will come in June.

How will it change then? Essentially, we will have 2 new subscription levels which will be divided by price and by quantity of titles available within the catalog. Exactly, because the novelty will be the presence of a fixed catalog from which you can draw your favorite titles or retrieve sagas that you have not had time to play. And this in my opinion represents perhaps the only real important novelty of the whole "modernization".

We will therefore start with a "basic" model called Playstation Plus Essentials which will include everything we have learned to know up to as of now, 2 games every month, online services and exclusive discounts for subscribers. The question that could be asked at this point is whether the 2 titles that will be given away will only be PS5 or if for a while longer the offer will include at least one of the two titles that can also be played on PS4.

This for all intents and purposes would not result in any loss on the part of PS5 owners as the console is completely backwards compatible. On the other hand, PS4 owners would have a benefit removed within a couple of months. Obviously, it must be said that it was the same on PS3, but perhaps Playstation could wait for the right moment to take the final step also in consideration of how the supply of consoles is quite different compared to the PS4 era.


The second level, on the other hand, is that of "novelties". Playstation Plus Extra for € 13.99 per month or € 99.99 per year will offer a catalog of around 400 titles between PS5 and PS4 to all subscribers. Obviously included in the price are all the benefits of the Essentials plan as well. There is still no news on the goodness of the catalog but apparently we will have a rich variety of both frist party and third-party titles from the big publishers. Obviously it will be necessary to understand how often it will be updated and if they will arrive all together, or at a fixed frequency. In short, in my view it is the best offer for those who immediately want to try the "new service" and get an idea of ​​what Sony wants to build.

And finally we have the last Tier (Playstation Plus Premium), the most talked about and which in my opinion is just a bench to try for the future and also understand what will be the response of the most "elite" users to this new tier series for the service. With the Playstation Plus Extra subscription at a cost of € 16.99 per month or € 119.99 per year, you will have access to all the benefits of the two lower floors, plus a list of about 340 titles including great PS1 classics , PS3, PS3 and PSP. All this will also be accompanied by access to the Playstation Now streaming service, with which you will be able to access the PS3 titles that will be available only in streaming mode.

As for the rest of the library, it will be possible to both download and stream. But that's not all because Sony wanted to add a small note of nostalgia by inserting some selected titles into the timed rehearsal plan. In fact, it is very likely that they are complete versions of games that will be made available to subscribed users and that it will be possible to play for a certain number of hours, so to speak, a bit like it happened with Cyberpunk 2077 and the trial version from 5 hours . In short, this last tier in my opinion represents the Olympus for the Playstation fan who will surely find bread for his teeth, even if the monthly cost is a little higher than the average.

What future for subscribers?

Playstation Photos At this point a question arises, but what game is Playstation playing at? Or rather, in Sony's plans a move of this type was foreseen and I'm running for cover after Microsoft's service is gaining ground, reaching the record threshold of 25 million subscribers. Obviously, in my opinion, the answers are many and not all of them are easy to discuss within a single article that wants to take the success of Sony's new "subscription project" as its main point.

If however c 'it is one thing that I am convinced of is that once the catalogs with the names of the titles that will be present within the various subscription tiers are made available many people will find it quite difficult not to recognize their willingness to give in to the monthly payment of the service. I am speaking above all of that generation that grew up with Sony consoles, and beyond. There are so many "new" players out there who can't wait to be able to replay old glories of the past with ease and without necessarily wanting to go to "real hardware".

The comments of online players after the presentation of the new face of Playstation Plus obviously went to waste. There are those who try to find a link between this service and that offered by Xbox, in my opinion to no avail, and there are those who are already enthusiastic about what Sony will want to put on the plate. While obviously waiting for the official catalogs of the service, we can already make a couple of considerations on Sony's choice. The Japanese company has always put first the desire to offer quality first-party titles, and many obviously complained about their absence within the plans of the Playstation Plus.



As Jim Ryan himself pointed out during an interview for gameindustry.biz, Sony is not interested in including its flagship titles in the service at the time of product launch. In fact, it considers those products as gems and spearheads for your console and consequently placing them within the subscription service would undermine the quality with which they are produced by Playstation Studios. In my opinion, the whole gamer community has wanted to "play" with Ryan's words a bit, drawing the conclusion that Sony wants to fight Microsoft with a service that is not up to par. But all this makes no sense to me.

Who will subscribe to the new PlayStation Plus?

The reason is soon said. The new face of Playstation Plus does not in any way want to bother to go against the magnificent Game Pass which for years now allows you to have access to a library of titles at a hyper competitive price. From my point of view Sony has on its side a brand that is certainly much more penetrating, and that could easily reach even the most casual players with the right marketing moves. I myself have more casual players in my circle of acquaintances who, even though they know the game pass, do not subscribe because they find the monthly payment inconvenient. Others, on the other hand, do not know the service at all, but at the news that Playstation would make games available for a fixed monthly price, they did not hesitate to write to me to ask me for confirmation on the veracity of the information.

In my opinion, this is the strength, once again, of Sony and its Playstation brand. From the 90s to today, it has been able to create a certain "authority" within various audiences that are intermittently "turned on" to respond to a call to action by the company. In this case, in my opinion, it will be precisely this audience that will be invaded by the news.



In fact, very often those who frequent environments that are more "rich" in information and knowledge of the sector forget that the true target is not us, but rather all those people out there who do not get information H24 about video games, but rather use them in a "casual" way. Consequently, my point of view is always to look at everything from above and see its developments. It is clear that Sony is laying the foundations for something that will come over the years. Ryan himself has in fact admitted that he wants to see how the market will respond to this new Playstation proposal and try to understand how to move over the years.

If instead we talk about how the vision of the two major market players is different, well, this in my opinion could once again lead to new developments for all gamers. There is no denying it, Microsoft and Sony currently enjoy a huge advantage in terms of services compared to the rest of the sector (Microsoft first of all, but this is another matter) and have two different visions on what the future of the gaming market will be. lead to interesting developments.

Businesses and decisions

Could wanting to simplify everything with subscription services could really lead to a lowering of quality? Less attention to top titles? These are the questions we are asking ourselves as gamers right now, but companies are also asking. Microsoft has certainly taught that this is not always the case, the Game Pass in fact represents a milestone for the entire Xbox ecosystem but which was born as a strong response to a clear signal of drowning.



Game Pass was born in fact in a period of strong stagnation of the Xbox, in which there was no way out. Then we know the rest, the service has become a great flag of pride that Phil Spencer always counts and flaunts on every little occasion, also making it clear how much the Redmond company has grown over the last few years.

Finally, what will the future be? There is no certain answer, but I am sure that beyond the background noises that are caused by unhappy users within the social message boards, there will be many more who will subscribe to Sony's service and that perhaps maybe once and for all they will say "but you know there is, maybe they were right, on the other hand it is not so bad to pay to replay Siphon Philter".