PlayStation Plus PS4 PS3 Vita 1

PlayStation Plus has always represented outstanding value, but how has the service held up in 2014? We’ve been looking back at the full year of Sony’s premium membership today, and have some statistics that you may be interested in. The first of these is the value of the entire Instant Game Collection from January to December, which offered £960.64 worth of software in Europe over the past twelve months. Meanwhile, according to our calculations, the giveaways in North America totalled around $1,349.29.

This is accurate as of the publication date, and takes into account prices on the PlayStation Store only. We should also stress that these are technically leases as per the structure of Sony’s flagship service, but the games are obviously yours to keep as long as you keep your subscription running. When you take into account all of the other extras that the platform enables, however – competitions, Share Play, and, of course, copious discounts – the figures certainly put the service’s £39.99/$49.99 annual asking fee into perspective.

But were the giveaways any good? We averaged out the Metacritic ratings for each month’s offering, and found that the overall annual score for 2014’s lineup of freebies was 79 in North America and 78 in Europe, so certainly nothing to be sniffed at. You can peruse all of our research in our much bigger article through here, but we figured that these statistics were worth breaking out separately. Are you surprised by these sums? Do the math in the comments section below.

[source News: Feature: Did PlayStation Plus Represent Value for Money in 2014?]