This is how they’re taking aim at Game Pass.
Today, PlayStation announced incoming changes to PlayStation Plus. There will now be new tiers to the service, as the company attempts to build a ship to take on Xbox’s Game Pass, so to speak. The new tiers launch in June.
PlayStation Plus Essential, the lowest tier, is basically the current day PlayStation Plus. It offers 2 free games a month, cloud storage for saves, discounts for being a member, and online multiplayer access. The pricing remains exactly the same as it is right now: $9.99 monthly / $24.99 quarterly / $59.99 yearly.
PlayStation Plus Extra gives you everything from the Essential tier, as well as a catalog of 400 of the best PS4 and PS5 games, which include not just first party Sony releases, but third party games as well. These games are provided as downloadable to play. The pricing does go up a fair bit, though: $14.99 monthly / $39.99 quarterly / $99.99 yearly.
PlayStation Plus Premium, the highest and most expensive tier, offers everything from the previous two tiers, of course. But it also tosses and extra 340 games from the PS3 via cloud streaming, as well as classics from the PlayStation, PS2 and PSP for either download or streaming. It also offers cloud streaming anywhere PlayStation Now is currently available for PlayStation, PS2, PSP and PS4 offered by both the Extra and Premium tiers. Premium also comes with time-limited game trials, allowing users to try before they buy. The pricing for this tier: $17.99 monthly / $49.99 quarterly / $119.99 yearly
Also, for those that don’t live somewhere PlayStation Now currently exists, they offer an alternative in PlayStation Plus Deluxe, which offers the same games, but in a downloadable form, sans-PS3 games. Conversely, it’s also less expensive compared to Premium, though they did not provide the pricing for this alternative.
The new Extra and Premium tiers represent a major evolution for PlayStation Plus. With these tiers, our key focus is to ensure that the hundreds of games we offer will include the best quality content that sets us apart. At launch, we plan to include titles such as Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal. We’re working closely with our imaginative developers from PlayStation Studios and third-party partners to include some of the best gaming experiences available with a library that will be regularly refreshed. More details to come on the games we’ll have on our new PlayStation Plus service.
When the new PlayStation Plus service launches, PlayStation Now will transition into the new PlayStation Plus offering and will no longer be available as a standalone service. PlayStation Now customers will migrate over to PlayStation Plus Premium with no increase to their current subscription fees at launch.
The company plans to introduce this change in a phased regional approach. In June, the new PlayStation Plus will launch in Asia, followed by North America, Europe and the rest of the world where the service is currently on offer. They plan to have this change completed before the end of 2022, and to expand cloud streaming to additional markets.
While the pricing for Premium is fairly steep, and the Extra tier is on a similar pricing to Game Pass, it’s important to note that both tiers have a pricing benefit over Game Pass: they offer a 12-month subscription at a discount rate. While buying monthly is analogous for Extra, and slightly more for Premium, their 12-month subscriptions offer a sizeable discount that Game Pass currently doesn’t compete against. To get 12 months of Game Pass, you need to (as far as I can tell) buy a 3 month subscription for $44.99 four times, for a grand total of nearly $180.
In short, despite initial sticker shock, their pricing actually seems to work out to being relatively competitive. That said, I personally will struggle to justify paying for anything above Essential tier. Sad to see there’s nothing from the Vita in there, but who knows what the future holds.
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