At first I found the news about the new PS+ to be welcome but when you look closely things begin to fall apart and I'm wondering whether Sony has just played a master trick of PR to fend off negative reaction.
1. Sony says the new PS+ essential basic tire would offer the same benefits PS+ currently offers so you won't be losing anything if you are current PS+ subscriber. However, when you read the actual description of the essential tier is "two downloadable games" with no mention of platforms, while the current benefit is three downloadable games with at least one guaranteed to be PS5. So it's a a huge downgrade for the same money but Sony seems to have managed to hide this cut with PR tactics.
2. Just by including Returnal it immediately makes the extra tier sound so much better, especially after prior rumors that the new PS + will not include PS5 games initially. However, that's the only PS5 game they have confirmed. They didn't specify that Death Stranding will be the Director's Cut or that Spider Man would be the Remastered version and even Miles Morales could be just the PS4 version. I hope it's wrong but Sony may just be fooling everyone into thinking the other announced games are PS5 version and by extension that the service is better than it really gonna be just by including Returnal.
3. No explanation as to how the tiers would interact, Sony has been frequently using games already on Now and the PS+ collection as part of their PS+ monthly offerings and has not specified whether the now two monthly games would be new games not included in the other tiers. It could very well be that people that pay for the higher tiers are not guaranteed to get anything new monthly and have to only trust Sony vague promise that the 400+ games list would be refreshed regularly.
4. No news on whether subscriptions upgrades would be offered. People who pay only for PS Now are getting a good deal and those who paid both for Plus and Now would keep on paying the same (however there are now news at what will happen if their subscriptions not end at the same time). However there's no news as to what happens if you are just a PS+ subscriber currently and want to upgrade to the new tiers. If I guess what Sony is gonna do is that if for example you want a year a premium but already have a year of essential you have to pay the 119 for premium and you'll get a year of premium and your year of essential would be there if you ever unsubscribe for premium. But that would mean that if you want to permanently have premium you just lost whatever you had already paid for PS+. I want to hope it would be better than that but the absolutely 0 talk of upgrade paths on the press release gives me little hope they'll go for a pro consumer solution.
Just to cover the first point, Sony has always promoted PS Plus as having two downloadable PS4 games at its core, even past the launch of the PS5. The monthly PS5 game is always seen as a "bonus", so they've never really counted it.
Yes, it's a little dodgy, but the official wording hasn't changed. You'll still get three games per month.
Found another PR trick, they haven't said anything about the PS+ collection but since the essential tier is only offering the two games per month we can assume that's going away. They are even advertising God of War, a game that was included on the PS+ collection as a reason to get the extra tier. That means now people will have to pay extra for a game that before anyone that had a ps5 or was planning to get a PS5 could get access to just with the basic PS+, yet Sony is trying to spin that as if its positive news somehow.
They are definitely not pulling any tricks here. They're being very straightforward on this because they know it will be scrutinised in to oblivion. They've answered a lot of follow up questions across the day too.
The only thing that remains to be seen at this point is what games will be on the service at launch, how will the library expand in the following months and years, and how will additional value be added over time. (Crunchyroll pleeeeeeeez)
"It's been my lifelong dream to operate a drill a hundred times bigger than me!"
@RubyCarbuncle I genuinely don't expect to ever pay that price for this.
I'll get it in the Christmas/New Year sale every year. If they don't knock it down to at most €80.00 during those sales I'll be disappointed.
"It's been my lifelong dream to operate a drill a hundred times bigger than me!"
I don't think any PR trick has been played by Sony. Its pretty much what I expected - with some areas not discussed yet (such as PS+ Collection).
Sony has about 50m PS+ subscribers but only about 2m PSNow subscribers. With over 100m consoles in the market, its clear that PSNow is NOT enticing the PS community to 'pay' more on top of their PS+ (essential to access ALL the content in any game) and now with a 'new' generation, it makes sense to 'revise' their PSNow service into something that will generate more 'income' for Sony.
The 'mid' tier makes sense - an 'extra' £4 a month for PS4/5 games for the latest, easiest games for compatibility, downloading to play and more likely to encourage some of those 50m PS+ subscribers to give Sony more money a month. If 20% (or 10m) add the 'mid' tier to PS+, that's an extra £40m a month, nearly half a billion a year. For 'dedicated' retro PS Fans, they have the 'high' tier but those may well be the '2m' PSnow subs.
The purpose was to make PSNow more 'appealing' and to try and get some of those PS+ subscribers to give Sony more money. Its clear that MANY thought PS+ & PSNow together were 'too' high a price, but maybe by splitting off the 'newer' compatible software for a 'little' bit more money a month may entice a lot of PS+ subscribers to pay more thus boosting Sony's subscription based revenue.
That's pretty much what I expected from Sony at this point in their business model which is a very 'sales' based and traditional model. They make Hardware and Software to 'sell' and use 'each' to sell the other - buy Playstation to buy&play Playstation exclusives day 1 and those day 1 exclusives are what sells the hardware. Game Pass (or similar) is a different model, its not 'sales' based but more about 'reach' and putting that 'software' into as many peoples hands as possible. MS want Windows, want MS Office, want their games on as many devices and in as many homes as possible - then if you 'like' the product, you can 'buy' to support the 'devs', the publishers etc but no 'obligation'.
Not saying 1 business model is better or worse than the other - just 'different'. That's why their 'services' are different at this point in time. Sony need to sell games, need to sell hardware to play those games because they are a 'sales' based company. If MS don't sell ANY Surface PC's or Xbox Consoles, you can still play ALL their software on Android/iOS Tablets/Mobiles, Windows powered PC's from ASUS, HP, Acer etc with intel, nVidia, AMD hardware inside. If MS don't sell a 'single' copy of Starfield, it can still be the 'most played in the first week of release' game of the year - 25+m people compared to a 'few' million who pre-ordered/buy day 1 - that's a LOT of people in Bethesda's 'store' selling you something that you want to spend your valuable **time** in and maybe, if you want to and enjoy that 'time', you can spend some money on supporting the devs - buy the game, buy Mods, buy DLC, buy Cosmetics, buy income boosters, buy merch etc.
Imagine if GT7 had been 'free' in a Subscription, would people feel more inclined to buy 'credits' to boost their money if they hadn't just spent £70? instead of 'grinding' for hours and hours, be less concerned about the 'online' nature - especially as games may rely on 'online' computing to handle some aspect of the game - from Complex AI processing, overcoming storage limitations by streaming from online, Physics calculations/destruction etc. GT7could have had even more incredible AI/Physics by running that in the cloud...
Long term, I can see Sony having to move away from Sales. Its not sustainable to build 100m+ consumer grade units each with their own CPU/GPU/SSD/RAM and components and distribute 'globally' with sufficient processing power to run the newest, biggest AAA games when others are maybe making '100's' of servers with significantly 'higher' processing power, no limits on 'storage', on RAM, on CPU cores/speed, GPU cores/speed etc to run those games in the cloud at maximum visual settings and the 'highest' frame rates - all streamed straight to your display. Whose going to pay £500/£1k on 'hardware' when you can play much better versions for 'free' (as part of your subscription). Input Lag may actually be 'better' too - running at '120' FPS, 120 times a second your 'input' is processed compared to '30fps' (or 30x per second) on Console may actually improve the response.
I'm sure some 'console' hardware will exist for a good few years yet. The 'cloud' is not yet that advanced but you can see the 'concept' with both 'nVidia' and MS's streaming - both allow you to play games running on much 'higher' hardware in the cloud than the hardware you may have at home - giving you access to features (DLSS, RT etc running on 3090 Ti servers) or Games (MS Flight Sim) on hardware it can't run 'natively' on - like Mobiles/tablets/laptops/last-gen consoles etc etc. Its more 'sustainable' to build 'super' industrial game servers that can run any game, any size, any complexity etc and stream to anywhere in the world than build & distribute 100's of millions of 'individual' consumer grade units to sell - especially as 'everything' these days has silicon inside. 100m consoles with 1TB SSD is a LOT - but could be 1m TB's in one of 100 'servers' around the globe - although they could load everything into RAM as the RAM pool could be in terms of TB's for massive data transfer capabilities. Some 'retro' hardware will exist but you'll get really 'dumbed' down versions of the latest AAA games - and may need 'online cloud' to boost AI/Physics, stream in the 'environment' as its too 'big' a world to fit on SSD's etc or not run at all locally anyway so streamed to it anyway).
I do think Sony's current 'gaming' business model will change in time but not this 'gen'. I don't know if they'll do 'gaming' specific hardware or incorporate it into their existing Hardware like TV's for example. If they put their 'controller' hardware inside their TV so you can wirelessly connect your controller and a 'headset' and stream Sonys games direct, maybe sold with a 3m PS subscription on Sony branded 'displays', you wouldn't 'need' local hardware. But that really depends on when Sony invests in the 'infrastructure' and Cloud hardware to warrant a change in business plans. Maybe we will see both Sony and MS have console Hardware for another 'generation' - even if most 'AAA' games are requiring 'streaming' - if not for all, for some of the processing/storage load. However, its inevitable that things will change - devs wouldn't be limited by 'hardware' or having to make a game that scales across a 'wide' range of Hardware - its running in the Cloud at the 'best/highest' spec and 'streamed' to a display - the only limitation is 'broadband' speed but 4k/120 is possible at 40Gbps and if you have less due to your broadband/mobile, that 4k image is supersampled down - still get all the AI/Physics/RT/visual effects/frame rates etc as that is unaffected...
You never 'own' the 'software' anyway, just bought a 'licence' to use it - which can be 'revoked' if you break any T&C's - that '£70' you pay to Sony for example for your 'game' is actually for a 'license' to use that software as it was intended, you do NOT own that software.
I won't be subscribing. I use my ps5 for the exclusives, which I tend to buy. Streaming ps3 isn't enticing. I wonder if the older ps games, on the service, will be available for purchase or just stuck on the sub. Not gonna sign up for third party games.
@Voltan well, that's not really true though. P5 is already slated to leave the collection. Whether it'll be replaced with p5r, is to be seen. But for sure, p5 is leaving.
@PhhhCough Yeah, that wasn’t announced yet at the time I posted that last comment
But still - the Collection in general is staying. Its contents will apparently be changing though (hopefully not just shrinking).
@PhhhCough@Voltan I think the original intent of the PS Plus Collection was to entice people to come over to the PlayStation ecosystem in the new generation. Since it is made up of older classic PS4 games to play via BC but is only accessible through a PS5 suggests it is more of a marketing tool to sell PS5’s. Seems they wanted to pull some Xbox or Nintendo gamers over to PS5 and give them an instant collection to have until they ramped up new releases for the console.
Now that there will be another avenue to provide that instant library, along with a decreasing need to promote older games with so many new ones trickling out, I feel like the PS Collection model will die off. They have confirmed it’s here to stay, but I just can’t see that it makes sense to keep curating it with new content. I could be wrong though. Maybe there is a population of people that are still coming in on PS5 as their first PS console who are willing to pay the base PS Plus price but not the mid-tier price. 🤷🏻♂️
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Topic: Has Sony just played a PR trick on us?
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