Sony Attracting More PSN Users Year-on-Year Despite Quarterly Dip

Can't wait for the showcase so we can move beyond the more tedious PS financial news 😅

That sheds a bit of light on why Sony is so insistent PC players should open PSN accounts. They're trying to close that 5m user gap.

118 MAU means they still have a lot of PS4s active. Hopefully more people shift so we can start moving away from the cross gen releases.

Helldivers 2 accounts for a lot of that, but so does the fact Sony still force you to take out a plus subscription just to have cloud saves on the PS5.

Well I'm 5 of them with multiple accounts.

@breakneck the big rumor at the Xbox showcase is that the new COD black ops will be only on PS5, Series and PC. That will move some users off the PS4, Xbox One. Then GTA6 and we should have most players that are going to upgrade upgraded. Every thing else important wise is still on last gen. No reason for the causals to upgrade yet. COD will. Hope that rumor is true.

@Sifi I doubt there are many people that are signing up to PS Plus specifically for such an insignificant feature as cloud saves. The only real use I can see for them is transferring saves to a new console and if you need to do that you could simply just sign up for one month to upload and download your saves to the new console.

@Kevw2006 If you don't know the guy he will say anything he can to paint Sony in a bad light, no point in trying to reason with him. I guess he can't stand to see the news on Pure where he normally spouts this stuff..

You are right of course, it would be unlikely that many would sign up to PSN for cloud saves only, unless you have multiple consoles in the house like I do! In which case its mandatory
Fortunately both myself and my wife would sub to PSN regardless.. or maybe I'd have a beef!

I renewed last November, mainly because of a sale, but I really think I’d rather put £120 in my wallet and buy games when there is a good deal. As most of my new game time is VR, and Sony don’t seem inclined to add VR games to plus, it’s just not worth It for me.

Currently I’m playing Tales of Vesperia on Extra. Which is great, but will take me several months to fully finish and platinum before I’m done. That’s around £30 of PS Premium time, and the game is usually only £6.99 to buy digitally…

I do get the occasional gem pop up on extra I haven’t heard of, such as Roguebook which I was playing recently. But I’m sure I can just take a note of the monthly additions and buy them separately if any appeal at all. Everything goes on sale after being added to plus so I’d benefit regardless.

I guess this useless metric is why they're forcing it on PC. Money men like big number. Big number mean shiny-shiny.

I'd like everyone on the forums that keeps griping about how PC players don't want a FREE!!!!!!! account, to remind the shareholders that this number represents FREE!!!!!! accounts

Mine is due for renewal in June, and I’m seriously thinking of just letting it lapse. Very rarely play online, and only the occasional game on PS+ extra that actually interests me. Considering how expensive it is now for a year I can’t help feeling I’d be better off buying games in sales instead.

@TrickyDicky99
Same, I got Spidey 2 for 8 bucks through PSN Japan lmao.
If that game wasn't so political, I would've maybe felt some guilt

You are required to have psn to play many online games. So they are bragging about a subscription service growing that we are forced to buy anyway... brag about a service growing that people arnt forced to buy

@Specky

What's political about Spider-Man 2? Did they talk about how government forms, how civic policy is made, or how to run a great election campaign? I played the game and it was about a bunch of comic book nonsense.

Let mine lapse this month. It's just not a value at this price and Sony essentially nuking third party sales for the service.

It's far cheaper for me to just buy the mostly older and likely discounted games if I want to try them or simply pay for it a month if there's really something that compels it.

Do we think a good majority of these are PC players who’ve been tapping into the recent PS-PC releases

@Mikey856 they didn't provide numbers, but I did see somewhere that the PC PSN numbers were "significant". Which waters down the actual metric of knowing how much they're actually making via PS Plus

In terms of PC who knows. In terms of people getting a console say they pick up a console because their peers have one. For Fortnite (seen some people do that) not surprised.

They could be new accounts from anywhere. They could be kid accounts whether for just whatever licensed tv show game and to set parental controls for then just handing a device (say an iPad and whatever apps controlled or not for it). Besides just a new family buying a console for the first time.

PS4s are cheaper then PS5s, they still make PS4s, games still come out on PS4, the games are cheaper. The online games are free so PSN account isn't hard to just create.

That or people with many emails making PSN accounts and maybe their old email doesn't work anymore not just swapping the email out. There is many reasons for making a new PSN account.

People don't always quit their PSN accounts so new accounts being made, new regional accounts for other overseas store fronts (getting games early or just wanting Japanese/US/European eshops to check things, even if it was for say the PS+ testing not just more normal cases), or maybe banned accounts and creating new ones or a number of other factors it makes sense.

So some new accounts is like sure, but others with more thinking behind it it isn't that surprising besides PC accounts to play Helldivers 2 and people going eh I want to play it and don't care while others do care and won't make an account/can't due to particular valid reasons of account access in a region.

@Kevw2006 "The only real use I can see for them is transferring saves to a new console and if you need to do that you could simply just sign up for one month to upload and download your saves to the new console."

idk,... Cloud saves is pretty important for more than just moving consoles. If you're someone who buys a lot of games. There is no way you can keep all those saves files on the tiny SSD consoles get. Eventually save data is going to cut into storage that already has to be share with large game downloads and photos/videos.

That's called population growth?

@Waitinonpsvr2 same as gamepass. I just want to play Halo online but I’m forced to buy into gamepass which Microsoft loves to brag about. Same with PS plus. I just want to play online. I wish both companies came out with a subscription tier that is just for online gaming. As I really don’t care for subsidized gamepass nor the content that PS plus gives.