According to Sony's latest financial report, PS Plus is still going strong, though the number of subscribers has been fluctuating. Year-on-year, the current figure sits at 47.4 million users, which is a small decrease from 47.6 million in the same period of FY 2020.
Of course, that's not the full story. The subscriber count ebbs and flows fairly consistently, and the last year has seen the figure average out at roughly the same level. A high of 48 million was reached in quarter three, which is a record, as far as we're aware.
On a similar note, monthly active users — all people making use of PlayStation Network, whether a PS Plus member or not — is also slightly down year-on-year, currently sitting at 106 million.
We're sure Sony isn't too concerned about either of these figures taking a small decline. The platform holder is on the verge of launching its new, overhauled PS Plus service, with three subscription tiers and PS Now's functionality folded in. It seems certain that, even despite some poor communication up to this point, the refreshed service will bring in more members thanks to incentives like libraries of modern and legacy games, streaming, playable demos, and more.
It will be interesting to see how the new benefits affect the subscriber count, and whether Sony can finally breach that 50 million milestone. Are you subscribed to PS Plus? Will the new tiers pull you back? Tell us in the comments section below.
[source sony.com]
Comments 38
For the amount of PS4 and 5 consoles sold I thought the ps plus attachment rate would be higher than that.
I am a subscriber myself
I thought they would drop by more tbh. I had assumed a lot more people would let their subs lag after the lockdowns ended.
I guess people like PlayStation.
It's because of the game pass
I cant see the subscriber count going too far higher. Over 50m? Sure. 60m? Probably not.
Hence the tiers. More money per subscriber. That's the way to make PS+ look better to the suits.
@dasd2 To be honest I can see in the future the amount of Game Pass subscriptions equaling and eventually passing PS Plus subscriptions.
Me looking at 700 more games to play.."I VE ALWAYS WANTED THIS!!" /s
As long as they focus on accessible good value PS+ basic service and keep the good work with no intrusive DRM, even if the press couldn’t care less this generation (wonder why👀), it’s cool.
Are we surprised?
I'm a sucker for having bought five further years of PS Now to turn into Premium
It shows you how these subscriptions plateau after a certain point. It's why people who think Game Pass will get about 100 subs (which they will need too if they want it profitable) are very naive, they would have to heavily rely on cloud adoption but most people won't want to stream console games on their phone.
@JJ2 It's amazing how GT7 being offline was a bigger story then an entire console. I guess in a way it shows how much of a global brand PlayStation is compared to the more regional one of Xbox.
I was on Plus but didn't renew it end of April, preferred to stat afresh once the new service launches in late June.
I don't really play online so happy to wait until then, looking forward to it as well. Going for the middle tier and hoping they add some good games at launch.
@JJ2 Right?
MS have done exactly what they were hated for even considering back in 2013 re DRM, but it's all wrapped up in Game Pass this time so nobody seems to care.
(Except for all of those people who currently can't access the single player games they bought on the Xbox store because of the current DRM issue on XBL).
The press have only barely started talking about it since last Friday.
We need to talk about this a lot more before Sony and Nintendo think it's okay to do the same thing. Because you know they both will.
I’m sure Covid has influenced these numbers
I’m subscribed, exclusively for cloud saves. Would had already canceled if they didn’t make individual game save backups an even bigger pain in the PS5.
@AdamNovice it is not unrealistic for game pass to reach those numbers given the platform install base that is not just about consoles and cloud but also Windows. As game pass becomes more popular, the PC Game Pass also ends up growing, and that’s a gargantuan install base. If Xbox ever makes a deal with Steam to bring Game Pass inside of Steam (something Gabe already says he would be all up for,) that’s going to skyrocket their numbers.
@Shepherd_Tallon although this weekends Xbox outage has been extremely concerning (I was personally not affected so can’t tell how broad the issue was) the game pass approach is nothing like what happened in 2013.
The 2013 debacle was about every console requiring daily online checks or become a brick even for disk based games. Today, xbox still frustratingly requires many disk based games to go online for the game install, but once installed, if the disk is in the tray, you don’t need to be online to play. Even this weekends outage didn’t impact disk based games.
Today, even digital purchase should not require daily online checks either. This weekends outage was reportedly easy to work around for almost everyone by telling the Xbox to just go offline (that’s another frustration, why must I tell the Xbox to go offline? Can’t connect? Just go offline on your own!)
@Tharsman True. I was reading about the issue last night.
From what I understand the workaround didn't fix the problem for everyone and it won't be resolved until this Friday. Plenty of people are still stuck.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to damn XBOX to hell or anything (what they've done now isn't nearly as bad as what was proposed in 2013, you're absolutely right to point this out), but I studied far too much consumer protection in college and I dread to see DRM in any form.
If I buy a digital game for full price that should be the end of it. I bought it for my account, and I don't owe anybody anything after that point, so there shouldn't be a need for any kind of check and there shouldn't be any issues when the authentication servers are down.
(I understand the need for these servers given how people like to play on someone else's console from time to time, and there's a fear that individuals might starting loading consoles up with games and then selling them.)
gog.com are the only platform I use who do DRM right. Which is to say that they don't do it at all. They sell you the installer file and that's the end of it.
DRM is the only topic you'll see me up in arms about btw. I'm self aware enough to know that it triggers me 😂
Yeah I think after coronavirus some decline should be expected. Even our figures on Push Square were higher than usual during the lockdowns.
"On a similar note, monthly active users — all people making use of PlayStation Network, whether a PS Plus member or not — is also slightly down year-on-year, currently sitting at 106 million."
I noticed it's "None of your friends are online" more frequently than it used to be.
If I didn't need it to play online, I would not pay for it, but with more and more of my friends moving to PC and Xbox, I may not need to anymore.
It's terrible, and I mean TERRIBLE, value for me as I already subscribe to Gamepass and Humble Bundle Classic which are faaaaaaaaaaar superior.
Ps plus is already saturated. Wonder how much will ps plus extra/premium be.
HINT: much less as it's less important.
@Snake_V5 I think it's quite the opposite. I think people value more playing online with the games they own more than a few new games that may or not appeal to everyone once in a while (once you played everything major in GP).
@Shepherd_Tallon I'm never buying an always online console. Sony or not. F them. Xbox series consoles are touching that border, and hopefully they go back 2 or 3 steps.
@Shepherd_Tallon
Indeed but what I find the most upsetting is DRM for retail discs as well.
(Which is even more like taboo conversation in gaming news)
@JJ2 Agreed. That's brutal.
For digital games and online games with DRM, while I disagree with it, there's some kind of understanding there for me as to why it's present. However, an offline game on a disc should never have DRM.
I know we've almost lost ownership of our games anyway, as what we buy on the disc now is rarely the finished game, but that doesn't mean we should casually give up what little ownership we have left.
Aside from updates and expansions we shouldn't need to have any kind of a connection in order to benefit from possessing a disc that we've paid for.
@AdamNovice
I’m sure a lot of people don’t even understand the difference between a game unfortunately being online only and a system requiring online checking.
Lack of relevant quality news and too many click baits instead.
Took me a while to realise I'd only really been playing F2P titles and didn't need PS+ to play online. I haven't missed not having the free games, which I rarely ever bothered with.
Makes me wonder, as Sony is developing a lot of live service (presumably F2P) titles if they'll be the same or maybe they're planning on making them only 'free' with PS+...
@Tharsman forgot about cloud saves , i guess that makes sense for them to charge us to store our saves on their servers , but as for charging for online ? i’ll always be against that
***** ps plus
Not surprising. The games this year have been mid at best. If i wasnt already paid up til november probably would have dropped it myself.
@Haruki_NLI Yeah, but costs will also go way up. Even though Sony is taking the more cautious approach when compared to all in Microsoft, I'm still not convinced these services will look good to the suits in the end.
See Netflix. The moment of truth doesn't look so good right now. Everyone wants out.
Almost 50 million is still good! I'm sure we'll see a boost in subs after the new PS+ tiers launch in June.
Not subscribed!
And not planning to subscribe to the new service.
First I want to know exactly what I'd be paying for and determine its value.
Sony's communicative skills have taken too big of a tumble and I ain't falling for nice words alone.
Maybe I'll subscribe again, but the revamped service has got some persuading to do.
@Shepherd_Tallon
Morning.
Sorry for coming back to it today but since we were having this conversation I still can’t believe people and the press don’t push against games not being present in the retail box you buy. Imagine buying a PS5 game at retail and then you find out it’s a PS4 disc inside. And you have to download the game you wanted to buy on a disc precisely. It’s incredibly anti consumer I feel. 🤯
On the opposite gaming sites are pushing to buy digital instead. 🙄
Anyway have a lovely day.
@JJ2 No I think you're absolutely right. The multiplatform sites, whether they intend it or not, they definitely give the impression that they want things to go a certain way. I've been observing this for a while too.
I still can't believe there isn't outrage over the state of DRM on XBOX. You see the fans on twitter complaining, but most sites seem to only be covering it half heartedly.
I didn't even realise that the discs required an online check until recently.
Regarding the outage, can you imagine the reaction if PlayStation had done this? The internet gave itself a hernia over GT7 just a few weeks ago.
Just one game, as @AdamNovice was saying.
But hey, maybe it just seems this way because the internet has become more balanced in the past month or so... 😂
@Shepherd_Tallon
I like following gaming news on Twitter. People demonise the platform but it’s like everything ; it just depends on how you use it like all modern commodity. Reading news from so many different sources at the same time (and being able to outline the primary source) give better view on the facts rather than focusing on a few opinionated sites.
Just don’t interact with it even with a long pole haha
@JJ2 Ah I like that.
I do something similar actually - I like to get news from multiple sources (Push Square, VGChronicle, Twitter, search Google etc), just to get multiple opinions on issues.
For example, one of the things I like about Push Square is, personally I don't really have a problem with most of what Sony does and I feel that they do more right than wrong for my tastes, but Sammy loves pointing out when they get stuff wrong. 😂
I disagree with him on a lot of the issues, but then again I'm not really looking for an echo chamber either so that's why I come here.
@Shepherd_Tallon
He’s like Kratos with the boy because he doesn’t want to admit he loves him. So he acts like a * towards him instead haha
@JJ2 😂😂😂
@Shepherd_Tallon
Good morning.
Oh man the latest ‘news’ about Jim Ryan made me laugh so much I got tears in my eyes and in a very good mood. Such a shame we can’t talk about it
haha
@JJ2 I have today off work and missed all of the news so far.
Just catching up.
I definitely have my opinions on this, but yeah, that's about as much as we should probably say.
Tap here to load 38 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...