Throughout the last few years it has been clear that PlayStation and Sony are streets ahead of their director competitor Microsoft and Xbox by nearly every metric, with one exception… the games on demand service the two companies offer. It is widely considered that Xbox’s GamePass is far superior to that of PlayStation’s PSPlus, even with the recent changes in the tier system the company introduced, and the extra games they add on a bi-monthly basis.
And yet, with all that said and fans firmly following the same general logic, it seems Sony isn’t quite ready to change up their approach, at least not yet.
Sony’s PSPlus, Xbox’s GamePass – A Competition
GamePass has become one of the few genuinely impressive and profitable parts of the Xbox brand right now. Currently fighting to secure the acquisition of Activision Blizzard against multiple countries opposing it, struggling to release first party games that are of any decent quality – see Redfall -, and a slew of their game still releasing at an archaic 30FPS, it’s really difficult to have an argument for purchasing an Xbox Series X/S over a PlayStation 5 at the minute.
The one saving grace for Xbox and Microsoft is the success of their GamePass subscription service, not only offering thousands of games at a player’s fingertips, but many releases end up on the service on day one of release. This was further hammered home during the two companies showcases, with every first party game announced to be on the service for Xbox, including their flagship release of the year Starfield, whereas not a single release can be said for PlayStation.
In a recent interview with gamesindustry.biz, Sony’s head of subscriptions Nick Maguire announced the decision that this won’t be changing any time soon and that the current approach to wait a few months post-release is working, although it is something that is revisited over time. This seems like a strange time to announce such a potentially negative piece of news, at least in the eyes of an average gamer, as the newest version of PSPlus launched a year ago in June 2022, meaning a huge chunk of yearly subscriptions are now up for renewal. Not the best sales tactic, if we say so ourselves.
“We’re happy with our strategy… Putting games in a bit later in the life cycle has meant that we can reach more customers 12, 18, 24 months after they have released. We’re seeing customers still get excited about those games and jumping in. For us, that’s working. Occasionally, there will be an opportunity to invest in a day-and-date like Stray and we will jump on those when they come in. But for us, letting those first-party games go out to the platform outside the service first… that’s working, and that will continue to be our strategy moving forward.
We are constantly working out what the right strategy is moving forward. How are player habits going to evolve and how do we make sure the service meets those future habits? No more I can say on that at the moment, but obviously, we are keeping close to it and thinking about the role that Plus can play moving forward.”
As shown in the last paragraph, the potential for first-party games is there, it just doesn’t necessarily factor very highly in their current business strategy. As it stands the thought of the God of War sequel or the third Horizon game being available straight away is an alien thought, but never say never.
Related: ‘That may be the last one I do.’ – Will The Elder Scrolls 6 Be Todd Howard’s Last Game?
PSPlus – Maybe Better than it Seems?
During the same interview, Nick Maguire continued with some interesting statistics, although without the same stats during the same period from Xbox, it’s difficult to see just how impressive they are. However, apparently since the catalogue launched this time last year, ‘a billion hours of gameplay’ has been recorded by players and ‘seven times as much time on PSPlus than they did with PlayStation Now in the year prior’ are both pretty impressive feats.
“And that’s from a wider bigger base of players… We’re pretty confident that’s down to the quality of diversity that we’re putting into the game portfolio. It makes PSPlus attractive to many people and we’ve continued to find high quality, high calibre titles. That means that there’s something there for nearly everyone.”
Maguire also went on to discuss some of the biggest games available on the service, and how they’ve helped it grow to these lofty heights now.
“Stray has brought in the highest number of players that have accessed that title over the first 12 months… And Ghost of Tsushima has brought in the highest number of hours of gameplay. People have really stuck around and really invested in that game. That goes to the strength of our PS Studios titles, which have seen great engagement and lots of excitement.”
“Four of the top ten over the year have been PS Studios titles, whether that’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Horizon Forbidden West and even Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, which only joined recently – that’s climbing very quickly and growing month-on-month. These exclusive titles are really what’s resonating. It’s bringing people in.”
It seems that over the last year PSPlus has grown bigger and better than the service it replaced, but it is still leaps and bounds behind Xbox’s GamePass. We’ll have to wait and see if PlayStation’s current strategy and policies regarding PSPlus will change, but for now it seems Xbox players will get their AAA games free as part of their subscription on day one, whilst PlayStation players may have to wait a few months, if not longer if they’re not wanting to buy the game separately.
For now, all we can say is it’s a pretty good time to be subscribed to both.
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