GAMES subscription services have been pretty well established for a few years now in Australia, but Sony PlayStation were notably absent from the party.
That’s now changed, with Sony announcing the PlayStation Plus service is now divided into three levels, with different benefits for each tier – notably, access to a library of hundreds of games for the middle and top tiers.
Sony were kind enough to provide me with a three-month subscription to PlayStation Plus Deluxe (the top tier) and I’ve been exploring it over the weekend, checking out its quite large games library of PS4 and PS5 titles.
Comparisons to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass are inevitable and, IMO, justified so I’m not even going to try and avoid making them because the middle and top tiers are, more or less, the PlayStation version of Game Pass.
The PlayStation Plus service in Australia is now divided into multiple tiers, which Sony summarise below:
PlayStation Plus Essential
- Benefits:
- Provides the same benefits that PlayStation Plus members are getting today, such as PlayStation®4 (PS4™) and PlayStation®5 (PS5™) monthly games, online multiplayer access, exclusive discounts, cloud storage and more. There are no changes for existing PlayStation Plus members in this plan and pricing remains the same.
- Price: AUD$11.95 monthly / $33.95 quarterly / $79.95 yearly
PlayStation Plus Extra
- Benefits:
- Provides all the benefits from the Essential plan and adds a catalogue of up to 400* of the most enjoyable PlayStation®4 (PS4™) and PlayStation®5 (PS5™) games – including blockbuster hits from our PlayStation Studios catalogue and third-party partners. Games in the Extra plan are downloadable for play.
- Price: AUD$18.95 monthly / $54.95 quarterly / $134.95 yearly
PlayStation Plus Deluxe
- Benefits:
- Provides all the benefits from Essential and Extra plans and adds additional games, including:
- A catalogue of beloved classic games from the original PlayStation®, PlayStation®2 (PS2™), and PlayStation®Portable (PSP™) generation.
- Time-limited game trials are also offered in this plan, so customers can try select games before they buy.
- Provides all the benefits from Essential and Extra plans and adds additional games, including:
- Price: AUD$21.95 monthly / $63.95 quarterly / $154.95 yearly
The asterisk (*) after the 400 games statement is that game availability varies by region, most likely due to licensing agreements etc.
Where there is going to be a lot of appeal is for people entering the PlayStation ecosystem for the first time (or who joined recently) and didn’t play any of the “Classic” games from earlier eras.
There’s been a few games I’ve found on the service I didn’t get a chance to check out previously, including Infamous: Second Son and Homefront: The Revolution, as well as a few indie games like This Is The Police.
The challenge for more established Sony fans is they’ve probably got a lot the games in the library anyway, and a lot of the others are available for next to nothing second-hand (I got a copy of The Last Of Us, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End from a well-known pawnbroker for less than the price of a pub lunch).
Having said all that, it’s only just launched so I am hopeful there will be additional games added to the service to increase its appeal. Sony say there’ll be around 400 games available in Australia, and even in its early stages, they’ve done an excellent job of genre curation, ensuring there’s games there for everyone.
Several of the Ubisoft games are there, including Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, and Far Cry 4, along with some other AAA heavy-hitters like Red Dead Redemption II and NBA2K22 and the 2016 Doom.
In this respect, however, PlayStation Plus’s premium tiers suffer from what I call the School Library Effect – Saints Row III is there, but not Saints Row IV. Sniper Elite 4 is there but not Sniper Elite III. Watch Dogs is there but not Watch Dogs 2 (or Watch Dogs Legion, for that matter). Red Dead Redemption II is there but not Red Dead Redemption.
There’s also a disappointing number of Sony-exclusive recent releases missing from there too. Gran Turismo 7 is absent (None of the GT games are there, now I think about it). Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart isn’t there. Horizon: Forbidden West is missing as well.
It’s complicated by the fact things like Returnal, Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut, God Of War, and Death Stranding: Director’s Cut *are* there, which makes things confusing for gamers who might reasonably think they’ll be getting access to the latest-release Sony titles as part of the subscription.
In this regard, Xbox’s messaging is much clearer: All their first-party games on Game Pass, at launch. Not having this same feature currently available with PlayStation Plus’s premium tiers is frankly baffling and I’m at a loss as to why Sony didn’t go down that road.
Adding to the situation is the issue that PlayStation Plus is quite expensive – $18.95/$21.95 a month (Extra and Deluxe, respectively) is a big (and steep, in my view) ask, especially in an era where every sentient life form and their pet has their own streaming TV service and the cost of living is skyrocketing generally.
The ability to “trial” games (which does include some of the new-release stuff missing from the main library) on a time-limited basis before choosing whether to buy them or not really isn’t that appealing a feature, IMO, and should frankly be a standard thing (as it is with many PC games) instead of something reserved for the top-tier of a premium subscription service.
How much value PlayStation Plus Premium represents for you will depend on whether you game on other platforms or not. If you’re solely a PlayStation gamer, then it does offer the chance to play a lot of games for a fixed monthly fee and there really are a good range of genres and game types to choose from, and having access to a varied library including Sony classics, AAA titles and interesting smaller titles is likely to be worth it.
If you’ve got a PC or Xbox, however, I’d suggest you’re likely better off sticking with Xbox Game Pass (which has many of the same games) and buying the Sony-exclusive titles separately.
Wider access to games is only a good thing and I’m very glad Sony have come to the subscription service party – I just wish the offering as it currently stands was cheaper and the library a bit more complete, especially with regard to Sony’s exclusive titles.
