Think PS Plus Essential's Monthly Games Are Getting Worse? The Data Shows You're Wrong

I think you'll find people can argue with numbers and charts. They'll be confidently wrong, but they can still argue.

As long as there's at least one game each month that seems interesting to me, I see it as a win. In September, I got Psychonauts 2 to play later and ended up using Viewfinder as my side game when I needed a break from a big single-player campaign. October was great for me, I'll actually play all three in the line-up.

There's no accounting for taste. I don't get much value from Essential because I've already stumped up cash for a lot of these titles.

I dont like it when they put games in essential that were already on extra

That requires you to put stock in Metacritic. The games are generally ‘better’ but I do miss a lot of the smaller gems we got back in the day I never would have played otherwise. I guess they’re just on the Extra tier now. My first game on the PS4 was Transformers Devastation because of PS Plus!

Oh. I didn't realize that I'm wrong about not liking a game when a certain percentage of critics did like it.

Some people can't comprehend having a varied taste.

The problem is that it's all subjective and everyone will have their own personal taste in games.

I've noticed that whatever games we get, it's impossible to please everyone, if Sony release a really popular game people moan because the chances are they've already played it or own it.

Release a lesser know game and then people will moan that we're not getting a triple A title.

In short what ever games we get Sony can't "Win"

Someone will always be unhappy with them for whatever reason

Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, @orvisbean101. Forty percent of all people know that.

It’s not all about scores/quality of the games. It’s about the combination quality/age/today’s value which doesn’t make PS Plus interesting for me. Most games on there I can buy physically for a good price and sell them afterwards.

When you include previously Extra tier games on the essential tier, to me, that's worse

I was excited for Psychonauts 2, but within the first 20 minutes I got stuck in the terrain and had to back track to a save 7 minutes prior. If that's happening so early on, I knew best to give up the game now. Oh well

I liked it when they had a selection of indies and then a poll was held with the winning game being made available, would love to see that feature again 👍

While I think subbers complain far too much about their random games service, these numbers wouldn't prove anything to any one. It's a fun little exercise — crunching the numbers — but an average of several averages comprised of 10-200 arbitrary numerical values isn't going to make anyone happier with a batch of games they don't connect with.

@Ludacritz Go back and play Psychonauts 2. Getting stuck in some terrain and losing less than 10 minutes of progress is no reason to entirely drop a game. Much less a phenomenal GotY contender like Psychonauts 2.

For what it's worth, I don't recall getting stuck in any terrain throughout my playthrough. But, even still, you should probably reevaluate your standards if a slight lack of polish dissuades your attempts to play a game.

You can use stats to "prove" any point it's just a case of finding the right stats. At the end of the day everyone will view these releases differently and folks just need to accept that

Personally I have thought this years essentials to be pretty bad for me. I don't think I have even had one game released on essentials I wanted to play. That is mostly not based on the quality of the games themselves.

Many of the games released this year I either already own or have played on other platforms often many months earlier. So those games coming to essentials offers me no value and for me that makes it a bad month.

Ones man's tat is another man's treasure and all that... 🤣

Maybe the PS Plus Extra games sour the perception of the Essential games.

The higher tiers include many high quality games. Gamers with high weekly playtime are fed up by these subscription services, so the appetite for Essential games could be lower and so the appreciation.

@Markatron84 on the other hand, 60% of people dont know that, and the majority is right - thats how things work in a democracy - but seriously, like democracy, you can only realistically have a say if you put your "vote" (money) in.

I think I played at least one of the games in 10 of the last 12 months going backwards. No complaints here

Fortnite is the best game ever - you can't argue with numbers.

Wish I'd played Psychonauts 2 years ago because i gave it a go last week and it just looked bad and mechanically it played bad. Time hasn't been kind to it.

Metacritic is a metric and the numbers are what they are, so good for PS+ and it's subscribers.

Here's my metric, that I have not measured, but it feels like it's getting worse for the constant increase in price.

PS5 is 5 years old this month. In those 5 years how many PS5 exclusives - not PS4 or PS3 games - have been on PS+ Essential vs how many PS4 exclusives - not PS3 or PS2 games - were on PS+?

I know there haven't been a ton of PS5 exclusives but how many of those have been on PS+? What % of PS4 exclusives were on PS+ by the time the PS4 was 5 years old? I just feel like PS4 was getting PS4 games, that why I subscribed, and PS5 has not been getting a lot of PS5 games, which is why I don't.

Metacritic scores are good, but not if it's for a game I've never even heard of. I'm still trying to get over "It Takes Two" winning GotY. Like, did that really happen? 🤷‍♂️

@nessisonett
Transformers Devastation was a really good game - it managed to merge guns, melee, and vehicle combat into its fighting system, and included some amazing VA - "me grimlock bite it til it works!"

You can argue it both ways with the same games. The issue is if the monthly games actually appeal to each individual gamer.

For a long time users, like me, it may look worse, because lots of games we recieve we already have (like F1). I think problem is variety of recieved games. While some publishers are lots giving games, some are not at all (almost) even if games are older than PS+ itself. Lots of games are surprise gifts but also lots rather looks like cleaning garbage bin. That is maybe why we, long time subscribers, feel it's on quality decline.

First off, you CAN argue with numbers and charts - saying otherwise tells me you haven't ever looked at sports statistics. Who's the greatest basketball player EVER?

But second, I think the methodology used here has a fatal flaw. It bases everything on the metacritic score - EVERYTHING. Which is fine, you need some metric to measure. But I argue two games with the same score might have a very VERY different value.

Here's a simple example: a game with a 90 metacritic score that was just released and has never gone on sale from its $80 retail price is not the same as a game with a 90 metacritic score that's been out for 5+ years and has regularly been on sale for $10 or less. This chart would treat both game identically, but fans are going to be a lot more excited about one over the other - for good reason.

As a specific example, the Plus list is padded with sports games (Madden, NBA, FIFA, etc) for the prior year dropped into Plus just before the next year's edition rolls out. Anyone who really cared much about those titles already own the version that's being retired even as it's dropped on Plus, so the metacritic score doesn't really mean much for that title - most people either own it or don't want to own it, with a very small group in between who might appreciate the prior-season's game that's also $10 in the bargain bin.

So I'd tinker with the metric, and add something like a "lowest sale price prior to release on Plus" value as another factor in the calculation.

I can argue that OliveOcelot needs a life.

@trev666 That doesn't make any sense. The games catalogue on 'Extra' is a rolling one. They come and go. The games on essential you can keep for as long as your subscription is active.
If you like a game on extra and it gets removed, surely it's great when it arrives on essential?

Used to be 6 games. Now it's 3. I honestly miss the days of getting hidden gems on ps+ instead of AAA games I bought 4 years ago.

In my case, better or worse is subjective to:
A) Do I already own any of the games they'll give?
B) Do I want to play any of them?

If I get a no in the first and yes in the second then its the best month ever. Both yes? Good month. A yes and a no? Ok-ish month. Both no? Worst month ever.

Only entitled crybabies would complain about the offerings and say they’re bad.

Been saying it for years.

The numbers mean very little. The idea they offer definitive proof is ridiculous.

They could offer up an extremely short, very old title thats already been on ps+ in some form and is available for peanuts that happens to have a very high metacritic score. that high score doesn't mean in critcisms for it being extremely short, very old and a repeat title arent all valid. If they followed up that month with a game thats a meaty length, 6 months old, never been on the service and is still full price but it has a metacritic rating slightly below the previous offering, does that make the following month worse? Because the data would say so...

For the record, I dont think essential is getting worse. I think November is the weakest month of the year but overall it's been a very strong year. Unlike this article and way of thinking, which is very backwards.

Best or Worse its depend on the LIMITATION of the Player's GENRE PREFERENCE

people who only stuck with one genre or two at their best, will always complain almost every month, because the game are not of their "taste".

as for people who enjoying most of Genre available, even of the art style from retro to modern, they will have feast of games every months.
i personally experienced it.
though there some month that just doesnt pique my interest (they put sims/tycoon games which is unfortunately not one of my prefence genre, but its okay, i can always learn to enjoy it).

so, people with limitation in their brain being unable to enjoy lots of genre, i dont recommend subscribing, you just end up complaining.

*though sony at least needs to vary their genre of games for Extra/Premium/Deluxe catalogue.
because essentials can only do much of 3 games, which cant satisfy everyone.

@RoomWithaMoose I have plenty of other games to play. I got the game through ps+, didn't pay full price for it. First impressions leave a lasting impression.

@Ludacritz Justify it however you want. You're missing out on a fantastic game.

I don't put too much stock on what critics said.

Critics like IGN said Alien Isolation and God Hand are bad games deserves a 5 and 3 out of 10 score. If i followed what they said, i would missed out solid and fun games that actually deserves good score.

Critics also said Genshin Impact is a great game deserves 9/10 score. I played it for 3-4 hours and i don't think it deserves a 9/10.

For me, critics can be wrong especially when these days many of them are lacking the knowledge to judge games fairly 🤷‍♂️

As for Essentials offering, one of the reason why i didn't renew my sub because the offering became less and less interesting.

@RoomWithaMoose I don't have to justify my opinions to you lol. Get off your high horse. I'm sorry I didn't like the game you like, I promise I'll do better next time.

@Ludacritz It's not that you didn't like it. It's that you dropped it for no good reason.

But that's your decision.

@Bizzy if a ps+ extra game now turns up on on essential its not great as ive already completed it

@RoomWithaMoose Yes exactly, thanks for telling me something I already know. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but people drop games that you like all the time. Hope you're busy policing what other people play. Just for that I'm going to tell anyone who's interested in playing Psychonauts 2 to avoid it at all costs because of my completely irreverent issue with it.

@Ludacritz That's an oddly spiteful and weird thing to do... Weirder yet because I wouldn't know or care, so all you'd be doing is launching a proxy war against a beloved game and darling developer. It's probably just a joke though. Which I guess is...less weird...?

Anyway, I'm just saying you should give a good game another chance. If you don't — whatever. It's your loss.

@RoomWithaMoose I've already convinced seven people to never play it. What a terrible, glitchy game. I'm also going to write PlayStation about this, maybe they'll refund me one month of plus. I can't believe I wasted twenty minutes playing this absolute mess of a "game".

@Ludacritz I don't know what the purpose of this comment is.

I really don't care about facetious dramatics; it's neither funny nor effectively provoking to me. I assume it doesn't do much to amuse you, yourself, either. And it didn't clandestinely make any genuine points.

If you're done being ostensibly offended over me suggesting you are missing out on a great game, I believe this conversation is over.

@RoomWithaMoose I have started a petition on change.org to remove Psychonauts 2 from ps+ for being broken. I really wish I could get those twenty minutes back before I got stuck in the terrain. What a disaster.

Here's an attempt to get at perceived value.

I got an email from Sony today bragging that the free Essentials titles offered "More than $99 worth of games for you to keep"

So I went to psdeals.net, looked up the lowest recorded price (US dollars) for each of the three games:
Stray: 17.99
TABS: 9.99
WRC 24: 12.49

That's $40.47 of "value," not "More than $99" as Sony is claiming (which I assume is based on MSRP).

I think the best sale price is a reasonable indicator of value, as it's a price you realistically could have paid and typically reflects (at least in part) the age of the game.

It would be hard to do that for all the titles for all time - in part because you'd need to stick with pre-Plus sale prices only. But I think tracking those numbers would be more interesting than the metacritic numbers.