Who expectedSony today announced the overhaul of PlayStation Plus revealed, which will be available in several stages starting in June 2022. This will combine PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now into a single service with over 700 available games.
Essential, Extra or Premium
Sony describes this as a major upgrade for PlayStation Plus, designed to ensure it differentiates itself from other providers. At launch, titles such as... Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11 and return be available.
"We work closely with our imaginative developers at PlayStation Studios, as well as third-party partners, to create a library of some of the best gaming experiences on the market, which is regularly updated."
Sony will divide PlayStation Plus into three tiers – Essential, Extra, and Premium – which offer the following features, with Essential corresponding to the current offering. Extra and Premium offer more features, at corresponding prices, of course.
Playstation Plus Essential (€8,99 monthly / €24,99 quarterly / €59,99 annually)
- Advantages:
- Offers the same benefits that PlayStation Plus members already receive, such as:
- Two games available for monthly download
- Exclusive discounts
- Cloud storage for saved games
- Online multiplayer access
- There are no changes for existing PlayStation Plus members with this plan.
- Offers the same benefits that PlayStation Plus members already receive, such as:
PlayStation Plus Extras (€13,99 monthly / €39,99 quarterly / €99,99 annually)
- Advantages:
- Offers all the benefits of the Essential plan
- Adds a catalog of up to 400 of the most entertaining PS4 and PS5 games, including blockbuster hits from our PlayStation Studios catalog and third-party publishers. Games included in the Extra plan can be downloaded to play.
Playstation Plus Premium (€16,99 monthly / €49,99 quarterly / €119,99 annually)
- Advantages:
- Offers all the benefits of the Essential and Extra plans
- Adds up to 340 additional games, including:
- PS3 games available via cloud streaming
- A catalog of popular classic games from the first PlayStation, PS2 and PSP generations, available either via streaming or as a download.
- Offers cloud streaming access for original PlayStation, PS2, PSP, and PS4 games, which are included in the Extra and Premium plans in markets where PlayStation Now is currently available. Customers can stream games on PS4 and PS5 consoles as well as PCs.
- This tariff also offers time-limited trial versions of games, allowing customers to try selected games before purchasing them.
PlayStation Now is being discontinued
The streaming service PlayStation Now will be discontinued and migrated to PlayStation Plus. According to Sony, the subscription fees for PlayStation Plus will not increase. The goal is to make the new service available in all regions by the end of June 2022.
“Building on more than 25 years of experience in game innovation, this change to our subscription services underscores our ongoing commitment to evolving our network services business to better meet our customers’ needs. With the new PlayStation Plus offering, we aim to provide an attractive subscription service for games, featuring curated content from our exclusive PlayStation Studios team and our third-party partners. The new and improved PlayStation Plus will allow our fans to discover and enjoy more content than ever before, as well as deepen their connection to the PlayStation community through shared experiences.”
Further details regarding the launch and content will follow in the coming months.
And what will be offered to customers who currently have both a Plus and Now subscription? How will they be switched over? Automatically to level 2?
Get the premium version…
Ugh, what a shame, no real competition for Game Pass.
Why does everyone want this just because Microsoft is releasing its Day One games? Nobody mentions that, with a few exceptions, all of Microsoft's first-party games are terrible. Nobody is forced to upgrade!
Microsoft certainly doesn't release "only crap," that's nonsense. It's always difficult to categorize a game selection as good or bad across the board, since tastes simply vary.
It's great that no AAA titles are being released on day one! This means the studios have more revenue and can maintain their quality. For me, it's clearly the lesser of two evils when it comes to Game Pass.
It's a shame there are no native PS3 games; I don't need cloud games. And I don't need PS1, PS2, or PSP games either. The graphical difference is too huge, even compared to the PS4.
So much for added value; the basic plan already excludes one game, effectively making it more expensive. And nobody bought a PS5 for PS4 games and ancient titles.
It should remain as before: 2+1 games, see Gamepro