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After several years of xbox game pass, Sony finally launched a competitive product. The product was already in the news last December, when Bloomberg reported that Sony's planned service would "compete with Xbox Game Pass." The news sparked a lot of reverie and excitement, and people couldn't help but wonder whether the service included cloud games, first-party games that logged in on the launch day, and a large number of new and old classic games.
Now Sony has officially announced a new PS Plus game subscription service. I didn't expect much from this service, and Sony's actual performance proved that I was doing it right.
Sony has made improvements to the original PS Plus subscription service in response to Xbox Game Pass. But it seems that even the use of the word "improvement" seems far-fetched – most of the so-called improvements are just modifications to the operational logic of the product. Previously, Sony had two subscription services: PS Plus would have some networking services and other benefits for $9.99/month and $59.99/year; PS Now was a cloud gaming service with a few of the biggest games of the moment and some classic games from the past, priced at $9.99/month. Now the two subscription services have been merged into the new PS Plus subscription service and divided into three tiers.
The first show is the PS Plus Essential service, which costs $9.99 per month and includes online multiplayer, cloud saves, and monthly free games. The content of this file is the same as that of the current PS Plus. The second show is the PS Plus Extra, which includes a certain number of PS4 and PS5 games in addition to everything that includes the Essential service. This new category includes content from the current PS Plus service and a small number of PS No w services for $14.99 per month.
Finally, there's the PS Plus Premium service, which is the content that's closest to you right now for players who are now subscribing to both PS Plus and PS Now. The service includes multiplayer online play, cloud saves, monthly free games, and cloud gaming features that can play nearly all games on PS platforms (this feature is not perfect). PlayStation Now can cloud gaming or download PS2, PS3, PS4, and a small number of PS5 games. The new PS Plus Premium adds titles from PS One and PSP to the list of cloud games and downloaded games, slightly more than before. Of course, just by looking at the number of games, the addition of these two platforms has brought great improvements.
Redefine Plus
Sony is really keen to expand PS Now's user base. Sony claims that PS Plus and PS Now have a combined 50 million users, but in fact 48 million of them are PS Plus users. Their launch of an upgraded PS Plus service that competes with Xbox Game Pas s is more like trying to attract some users who originally belonged to PS Plus Essential to PS Plus Premium. In this regard, the new subscription service has great commercial potential. As a user who now subscribes to both PS Plus and PS Now, the new subscription service actually appeals to me. At the moment, I'm spending about $179 – $59.99 per year for PS Plu s and $9.99 per month for PS Now, compared to $119.99 per year for PS Plus Premium (equivalent to the annual fee for a full year of subscription to PS Now). For my wallet, it's a bit less burdensome (and of course it still bleeds during the annual Black Friday promotion).
However, as a competitor to Xbox Game Pass, Sony's subscription service is not yet qualified. As a addition, Sony now put some PS5 games in PS Plus, including Works such as Death Stranding, God of War and Marvel Spider-Man: Miles Morales, but this subscription service will not be the first to join Sony's new first-party new works. (There is no Spider-Man 2 or God of War: Twilight of the Gods).) This means that the new PS Plus is more of an improvement than the old PS Plus, and Sony's new service does not have much advantage over the Xbox Game Pass.
The absence of first-party blockbusters will not change in the short term. Jim Ryan, the current CEO of PlayStation, has said that for AAA games, PlayStation will continue to stick to the current model, and he believes that investing in blockbusters, selling and then continuing to invest more is a "virtuous circle".
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Jim Ryan said, "Putting a game that has just been released on a subscription service right away is contrary to our past strategy, and we still won't do it that way in the new service." We believe that if we take this approach to games created by PlayStation first-party studios, the previous virtuous circle will be broken. That way we won't be able to continue our previous investment in first-party studios, and we don't think players will want to see the negative effects of a reduced game quality."
Optimize, not reinvent
Honestly, sony's model works. Nintendo Switch aside, the PS5 has a huge advantage over the Xbox Series in terms of sales. Even though Microsoft refuses to release data on console sales, a comparison of how quickly the PS5 and Xbox Series are sold out and how much they sell on the second-hand market shows that one of them is clearly in the lead. There's a rule of thumb that works well here: If there's news that makes one party look like it has an advantage over its competitors, that party will publish it. Sony announced the sales of the PS5, and their rival Microsoft has long stopped publishing the sales data of the Xbox Series.
But when it comes to subscription services, Xbox Game Pass does a better job on all sides. With the purchase of this service, players will not only be able to play Microsoft's various first-party masterpieces on the day of launch (this advantage will become more and more significant as Microsoft acquires more and more studios), but also enjoy the benefits of EA Play and support for cloud gaming on PCs and mobile phones, and the pass also includes a series of classic Xbox first-party and third-party games, and also adds assisted targeting and supplementary targeting to many classic Xbox One, Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles Features of HDR. It all costs just $14.99/month, the same subscription price as the mid-tier service in PS Plus.
The new PS Plus service will compete directly with such an Xbox Game Pass. Obviously, PS Plus does not have a battle in this game. Does this mean that the PS Plu s is a poor product? No, it just shows that Xbox Game Pass is just too good. At the same time, for me, I am looking forward to the final Sony version of the Game Pass, rather than a product that has been stitched up on an existing product like this.
A few months ago, I decided to play some classic game series over and over again. YouTube blogger Noah Caldwell-Gervais has done a great job of the Gears of War series, which is a series I haven't played yet. As I was preparing to purchase the series separately, I found that the entire series was already included in the Xbox Game Pass library, and there was even an upgrade! I can play this series from end to end without hindrance. The Xbox Game Pass is the closest thing I've seen to Netflix in the gaming world, and with it, I can enjoy the entire Gears of War series!
And when Ricky & Tinker Bells: Time Jump was released, I had a similar idea of wanting to look back at the entire series. The first time I experienced the series was in 2016 when the Ricky & Tinker Bells series launched a reboot. But when I went to PS Now to see if the entire series was available, I was disappointed to find that there were only Ricky & Ding-Dong: Loot, Ricky & Ding-Dong: A Rift in Time, Ricky & Ding-Dong: The Four-In-One, Ricky & Ding-Dong: Total Attack and Ricky & Ding-Dong: The Bond. Including the second installment of the series, Ricky & Ding-Dong 2: Commando, as well as "Ricky & Ding-Dong 3: Arsenal", "Ricky: Deadlock", "Ricky & Ding-Dong 5: Size Incident", "Ricky & Ding-Dong: Tools of Destruction", "Secret Agent Jingle-Dong", "Ricky and Ding-Dong: Before Connection" and other works are not included. Even the remake integrated version of the series released on the PS3 at the time could not be played.
At the same time, when playing "Infamous" through PS Now, I also had a very poor experience due to graphics and latency problems, so I couldn't continue to play. These are your own games, Sony! At PS Now they should have a great experience. Can you show some of your best games on PS Now in the best possible way?
Sony's subscription service brings players only a mixed library of games and sometimes dysfunctional service features. Sony's current approach is to merge subscription services that are not performing precariously with services with more features and better performance. That approach could work, given that PS5 is already ahead of the competition, and attracting a subset of the 48 million PS Plus subscribers to the new PS Plus Premium could allow Sony to earn more revenue on subscription services.
Still, I'm expecting more from Sony, and I hope they'll improve the quality of their subscriptions and really bring something that competes with Xbox Game Pass and bring more content to PS Now right away. Perhaps with the arrival of the new PS Plus, these expectations will eventually be realized. But for now, what Sony is doing is patching up the seams, not building products that are strong and future-proof.
Translation: Liu Sheng is not a sword
Edit: Tonkotsu ramen