It’s Official; Sony Reveals PS Plus Essentials, PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premiuma three-tier subscription service that is Xbox Game Pass.
basic level of service, PS plus pointscosts $9.99/$8.99/£6.99 per month (or $24.99/$24.99/£19.99 every three months, or $59.99/$59.99/£49.99 per year), effectively the same as PS Plus.
next band – PS plus extra – Includes all the benefits you get from PlayStation Plus, plus a library of 400 PS4 and PS5 games to download to your console. Marquee PlayStation games such as Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, God of War, Homecoming, Mortal Kombat 11 and Death Stranding will be available as part of this tier (similar to PlayStation now, at the moment). It’s worth noting that Sony games won’t be added as part of the service on day one – unlike Xbox – instead we’ll get first-party games on the service sometime after the initial release window for first-party games square game.
PS Plus Extra costs: $14.99/$13.99/£10.99 per month, $39.99/$39.99/£31.99 for three months, or $99.99/$99.99/£83.99 per year.
Finally, there is PS Plus Premium – This tier includes all of the above, plus classic games from PS1, PS2, and PSP, limited-time game trials, and PS3/PS4 game streaming. The service costs: $17.99/$16.99/£13.49 per month, $49.99/$49.99/£39.99 for three months, or $119.99/$119.99/£99.99 per year. Sony points out that as part of this program, you’ll be able to download or stream retro games (thanks GI.biz)
Apparently, we can expect a “catalog of beloved classics with streaming and download options across the original PlayStation, PS2, and PSP generations,” although no details of them were shared at the time of writing. According to PlayStation, this tier will have about 340 more games than the previous tier.
These changes to the current PS Plus setup will start in June. “During the June time frame, we will initially launch in several markets in Asia, followed by North America, Europe and the rest of the world where PlayStation Plus is available,” Sony noted. “Our goal is to have our new PlayStation Plus game subscription service available in most PlayStation Network territories by the end of the first half of 2022. We also plan to expand our cloud streaming strengths to other markets and will make it available at a later date. more details”.
The service appears to be a mix of PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now, codenamed Spartacus, and according to recent reports, Sony has been working on it for a while.
Given that we saw Sony’s trademark Knack earlier this week, can we expect the long-suffering PlayStation mascot to resurface with the service? Strange things happened.
Similar to its Xbox template, the service formerly known as Spartacus will have a monthly fee, and players will need to subscribe to the service to continue using these benefits on a monthly basis.
Unlike the Xbox service, though, you can join a variety of tiers — slightly more diverse than the Xbox Game Pass Normal and Ultimate tiers.
More expensive tiers will let you stream the game (rather than download it before playing) and provide exclusive access to demos, so you can try out high-priced PlayStation games before the official release.
It makes sense for Sony to launch it now in 2022: Sony has been lacking a real competitor to Xbox Game Pass for a while, and while PlayStation Plus has 48 million subscribers (as of December 2021), its PlayStation Now service is only 3.2 million Wan – Rebranding and relaunching its subscription service in this way is certainly a good option, and could even dent the 25 million user base that Xbox Game Pass has (as of January 2022).
