New PlayStation Plus Won't Have First-Party Releases on Day One Like Game Pass
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Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 09:45 AM
Seems like a bad idea for sony - subscription service £ much better than only some people buying and most at a highly discounted price.
In honesty I wouldnt pay that much for subscription on top of sports packages and disney+.
But alot of people wouldWednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 09:56 AM
Well given how hard some of the Xbox games crashed I’d say he has a point.Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 10:24 AM
Not sure which games you are referring to, Wicked. On the whole, Game Pass has proven very, very successful. It is liked very much by their subscribers, and every exclusive goes day one into the service. What's not to like?
Not having the Day One entries for the PlayStation means that most will stick with the Essential Tier (basically Plus, which you need for online gaming). There are just 2 million Now subscribers who will be moved up to the Premium tier, but how many will stick with it at its inflated price, is entirely another matter. Sony haven't been particularly consumer friendly thus far this generation, and are taking their userbase for granted. Not including Day One releases is just more of the same. What they want it people to buy Essential (they'd like more, but this is what they will expect) and to pay £70 for those big exclusives on top of that.
What they will do though, is flood Essential with all their forthcoming Games As A Services titles that they currently have in development (10 at least, at present). That way they can safely expect a large initial player count, but as with GT7, I think we can safely assume those games will be filled with expensive MTXs...Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 10:35 AM
Pretty odd to put this up in comparison to Game Pass and shit the bed on a lot of key features that people are after. It'll look even worse once the slate of available games are revealed to be generic stuff that's not gonna sell more memberships (otherwise, why not have a better lineup of what to expect when making this announcement?) I'll save my money, thanks.Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 10:44 AM
We won't honestly know how well this plays out until all games are known and people test the streaming etc but I've seen enough to know premium is for me. Two spiderman games alone at the start is enough to cover doubling my sub fee.Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 11:16 AM
I'll stick with the original Plus tier.
Even with day one releases I'm not sure I'd find it worth it to pay more for. Because we all know Sony would screw it up.Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 11:17 AM
Everyone seems to think Sony should do with Plus what Xbox does with Gamepass and their first party titles, but the only reason Xbox can afford to do that, is they have next to no first party titles, so its easy for them to say all of their first part titles are added day one, when that's like 2 games a year (if that), for Sony that would be way more and they would lose out on so much more money, i'm happy with what they are doing, if i want to keep enjoying plus as i have been then i can, if i want to spend a bit more for PS1 and PS2 games when they announce them (hopefully with trophy support) then i can do that too. The only real shame is that the PS3 games need to be streamed, would have been a guarantee for me to get the premium tier if they could be downloaded.Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 11:56 AM
@Berzerk You are waaaaaay underestimating the amount of exclusives Microsoft now has coming through. Currently they have more exclusives coming out in the next few years than Sony (based on what’s been announced so far)Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 12:17 PM
Meh, IMO MS has a better understandment of the future generation.
Paying a monthly subscription and receiving access to major releases on release date makes them actually play it and engage in secondary monetization - which is where the real money comes from.
Why should I pay 80(!!) Euro for a game day one? And then another 30-80 for the DLC? When I already get 2 games and discounts on older games via the subscription I already pay that's hard to justify.
There will always be breakout successs like Elden Ring, Horizon, God of War ..., but games like Days Gone wil be the ones who suffer. Good, but not good enough. With Game Pass, that's not a problem, people will at the very least try it.
That also means games are less reliant on favourable reviews. If I have to shell out 80 Euros, it better be fucking worth it. If all I waste is time for the download (ingoring datacaps here, which sadly are still a reality), I don't care that much whether the game is just mediocre if it still caught my interest.Wednesday, March 30, 2022 @ 12:24 PM
@XenoFan, The Last of us Part II 3 million, Ghost of Tsushima 2.4 million, Spider-Man 3.3 million all in the first 3 days.
@JuggernautClone, They've announced alot, but barely shown anything. Then you're also only looking at quantity (if they really have more atm).
OT: Not surprised at all, given their past sales numbers they can make much more by not including it in the subscription. Everyone seems to think that the only reason people have Game Pass is for the day 1 exclusives (2 since launch of Series X), I highly doubt that.
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Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and President Jim Ryan has confirmed that the ‘all-new’ PlayStation Plus won't have first-party PlayStation releases hitting the service on day one, a la Xbox Game Pass. Ryan explained that PlayStation is currently enjoying a “virtuous cycle”, and to disrupt that could potentially prove harmful to said cycle.
“We feel like we are in a good virtuous cycle with the studios, where the investment delivers success, which enables yet more investment, which delivers yet more success. We like that cycle and we think our gamers like that cycle," Ryan explained in a chat with GamesIndustry.biz.
“[In terms of] putting our own games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release... as you well know, this is not a road that we've gone down in the past. And it's not a road that we're going to go down with this new service," he went on to explain. “We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want.”
Ryan added that he wouldn't necessarily say “never” to releasing first-party games day one on PlayStation Plus, noting that the industry can change quickly. “The way the world is changing so very quickly at the moment, nothing is forever,” he said.
“Who would have said even four years ago that you would see AAA PlayStation IP being published on PC? We started that last year with Horizon Zero Dawn, then Days Gone, and now God of War – a hugely polished and accomplished PC version of that game,” he went on. “[We’ve had] great critical success and great commercial success, and everybody has made their peace with that happening and is completely at ease with it. I look back four years and think nobody would have seen that coming.
“So I don’t want to cast anything in stone at this stage. All I’m talking about today is the approach we’re taking in the short term. The way our publishing model works right now, it doesn’t make any sense. But things can change very quickly in this industry, as we all know.”
Ryan also discussed the three pricing tiers for the new PlayStation Plus, defending the decision to offer a 12-month subscription, and how it breaks down in terms of value, given that PS Plus Premium tier offers a library of PS1, PS2, and PSP games for download, as well as PS3 titles via cloud streaming - making for 700+ PlayStation titles.
“It is a fact – for our services, at least – that the great majority of people subscribe through a 12-month subscription,” Ryan observed. ”It’s more than two thirds who subscribe that way. That is an area of value proposition that we have looked at very hard. What we are delivering is that, for a 12-month subscriber, and that is the great majority of people, the monthly subscription rate for PlayStation Plus Extra will be $8.33. And for PlayStation Plus Premium, it will be $9.99. We think, for what people are going to get, this is a terrific value proposition. And one that simply wouldn’t be possible if we were to put our studio’s games into the service upon release."
Ryan concluded: “It's all about choice. There are obviously many millions of people who are happy to subscribe to PlayStation Plus. We offer them that option on the platform, and we think that we are offering a significantly improved option with the changes we have made. Equally, if people want to play Fortnite or Call of Duty or FIFA, and have their sustained engagement that way, that's fine, too. Nobody is obliged to do anything.”
The all-new PlayStation Plus will be rolling out in June, with Extra and Premium tiers offering access to PS4 and PS5 titles like Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal at launch. You can read more about it, alongside pricing breakdowns, here.