Your PS Plus Essential Sub Netted You $1,500+ in PS5, PS4 Games This Year

I’ve stopped caring about Ps+ value. I pay for online, I might occasionally play a free game, I’m satisfied regardless. (I know the free games is what we’re technically paying for since the ps3 days.)

EDIT: I do activate all games every month if I ever want to play it later.

When you look at it this way it’s hard to argue against it really. The value for money is incredibly decent.

Haters will hate regardless, I thought this year's offering were very good, there was something for everyone. I think the two stand outs were Lies of P and Alan Wake 2.

Im sorry but this is nonsense listing each game as full retail price years after release

That sounds good on paper, but only if you haven't bought any of them, and played each other. Not to mention those games usually were heavily discounted even without psplus.

Assuming that you claim and play every single game then you simply cannot argue that it offers great value for your money.

However I've just scrolled down the list and I think I've only actually bothered to download and play 9 of those 40 games listed. (I always claim the games, just don't always download them)

Obviously that's just me, everyone's personal taste in games will differ. (as is clearly evident in the "are you happy with your monthly games" Polls)

Despite not playing them all, Id still argue that 9 games for £60 a year is worth it... for me at least

$1500 +? LOL. No it didn't. All these games are listed at full price. Bye.

I’ve played Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon: Forbidden West, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Thymesia, Immortals: Fenix Rising, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Streets Of Rage 4, Kena, etc. all from having Premium (later downgraded). It’s been well worth the money. Especially since my son plays basically every game they release each month. It’s been a net positive for me.

I don’t play nearly as many games as most of the enthusiasts on here, but I still find PS+ a great value.

I’m locked into Premium, but I still play over the subscription fee’s worth of games each year. I roughly factor my break-even point for my money at 6 games from the service played; that’s assuming an average price of the games around $20-30. This year I played exactly 6 PS+ library games, so I got my money’s worth. Most years I do more than 6.

There’s also value in playing something from the service that you wouldn’t otherwise try, and so it opens new avenues to diversify my playtime. Some examples from this year that I played which I probably never would have otherwise were It Takes Two and Sword of the Sea. Both were really quite good and I’m glad I played them.

Then, the other perks are all just icing on the cake: cloud saves, online play, the occasional extra sale discount, and my favorite — cloud streaming.

Counting the all-time low price at the moment the game was received - £573.61

And now everyone should actually count what they played (or intend to) at “discount prices” that they would actually pay for the game. I have Extra and can tell you it is a really good value for me. (The negative effect is I would rather wait on something to get on PS Plus, so some devs are simply not getting the money from me… And they deserve them)

I dont see how anyone can complain about it. Even if multiplayer was free. For cost of one full price rrp game, you got to play all of these games. What else can you get for 6 pound a month that's better value entertainment wise?

And my Netflix account provided me with films and series for more than 100k of value, based on the original retail prices of the DVDs. And now?

Can't deny it's excellent value for what you pay, even more so if you're subscribed to Extra.

But it's the WRONG £1500! Jokes aside, you can't really argue with the price you pay and what you get in return. Plus, it made me play games and even genres of games that I now love that I wouldn't have looked twice at previously.

And yet I didn't play a single one of them. To be fair, I do usually play at least 2 or 3 games from PS+ a year to justify the sub, but I've not played my playstation much this year. All this makes me realise is there's too many games, not enough time, they're not even close to worth the prices they're charging and I'm paying the best part of £100 a year to occasionally talk to a few friends in chat while we play different games. If anything it's made me feel a bit stupid for buying Alan Wake 2 for full price and not getting round to playing it. Online play should be free, I'm more than happy to give up the library of unplayed PS+ games.

i stopped reading the lst after Suicide Squad valed at $70. Did anyne anywhre get $70 worth of value out of that should have been a free to start game?

The sevice is propbably worth it to a ot fo people, but if you go through the PS shop and only pick ut out games that Pushsquare gave reall bad review scores too, like total shovelware going for $20 or whatever, s there really any value there?

I play several free to play games that have free online, my value is $80 in my pocket by not paying to play online.

Despite apparently being a certified 'hater' I generally think it's good value especially for those only just buying a PS5 who might have been out of the loop with gaming for the past few years and I have recommended it as such.

But the entire premise of this article is utterly ridiculous. I mean come on fellas.

Looking the full list it is indeed good value but it didn't feel like it most months personally.

I didn't renew my subscription and unless I play co-op games with my friend I don't plan to do it most of the year, at least it will be less frequent for sure. My Gamepass also ends in April and I plan to do the same. I realized that buying/owning games that I want to play right away is much more satisfying then having the illusion of playing countless games from these services.

The value is not the monetary savings, but the quality of the games. It was a mixed bag. Some good titles among lots of poor titles. So saying it netted you over 1500 is a sensationalist headline.

There were only 6 games I like over the year, and i already had 3 of them, so there was little value in it for me.

maybe you should have also averaged out the metacritic score for these games to see what the quality was. Probably wouldn't look as good.

This is a silly way to judge the value of a subscription. I’m (mostly) happy that I get a game I want to play every month or two. If they only included online multiplayers and sports titles, the retail prices of those games would not convince me to be happy about it.

Imagine subscribing to a fruit-of-the-month club, and every other month they ship you a durian. That would be excellent value for money, but so what? But at least you could resell the durian.

If only we could get a $5 credit for every Essential game we didn’t claim.

Given these are the highest prices, then I would only have saved that amount if I was a total and utter buffoon.

It goes beyond the monetary saving though. I get great value out of PS Plus, sure, but it also encourages me to play games I might have missed, or not got around to.

Well, let’s say this isn’t the best article on Pushsquare. Luckily the overall quality of articles is good though.

@rjejr when we got it was still price at 70 dollars how often do u think games drop price on ps store not very often it crazy that they still want full price for some games they been out for years

@get2sammyb Some people ate Tide Pods. Worth it? 🤷‍♂️

This math is meaningless. Putting aside the fact that most of these games go on sale regularly, the value we get from these games is totally different. If I buy them, I get a perpetual license. PS Plus gives me the right to use them only so long as a I am subscriber.

On top of that, most people won't play every game since they are in all different genres.

Putting aside this nonsensical value calculation, I think PS Plus Essential and Extra are both good values if you play a meaningful amount of those games. For my needs, it is the only subscription service worth considering.

Think y'all need to apply some ambiguity to this article . Looks like a lot of research went into it , and for what ? commenters to judge it "not the best" and comparing it to some obscure fruit you may get in some whimsical fantasy fruit subscription !

FFS get real !

@get2sammyb

First of all merry christmas, second you put a lot of effort in listing this stuff - thank you for that, for me it feels still a bit foul, with the price comparison, no matter, at the end of the day Sonys PS Plus service is a good deal for many people (me included), not as huge as gamepass WAS, but I would not wanna miss it.
We had several huge games in the service and I am a member for so many years already and still singed up til 2027.
Let us see what the next year brings.

Oh, wait Premium is garbage, yeah I had to end on a negative note ^^

Cheers

@get2sammyb Damn. A lot of grumpy people this afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to write this man. Even if some aren't thrilled about the calculations, I appreciate the wite up.

It's fair to call out the full price of these games.
We all know that most will be on sale at some point for much lower and can do our own mental arithmetic to estimate what we think we have saved based on individual preferences of games we like. Impossible for push square to tilt the article in that direction.
I 'tried' 7 of these games but didnt stick with them. A few more are on backlog and I will get round to them. Best game for me on this list (D4) I had already bought.
So not a great year for my taste, but overall im happy with my ps premium subscription. I've had better luck with the extra catalogue.

@Old-Red use discord

My essentials was expired since August and the only games that i've played was W40K: Boltgun, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Ghostrunner, and Syberia 3.

I'm probably gonna renew again in January or February because i wanna play SF 6 / multiple fighting games.

No it didn't, lol.

@get2sammyb Still not subbed and still don't care.

@8bitOG PSN Party chat is free.

@8bitOG I do this with most friends, but the Playstation buddies are reluctant.

@EVIL-C Ha, I didn't realise that, maybe I should let the sub go then. I did need it to play Monster Hunter online, so I guess that game cost me £130 essentially.

It's actually quite manipulative that they call it essential, basically suggesting that you must pay them £70 a year by proxy.

Anyway, I actually think it is a good deal overall if you don't have much money to spend on games and aren't some kind of physical collecting freak like I am. I do wish there was a basic online option though, that cost £10-20 a year for online play.

And the best game in all of the list, in my opinion, was Balatro. It's now my go to game if I have an hour to spare, 100+ hours played and definitely worth the Essential subscription by itself. I wouldn't have played it if it wasn't on the monthly list

Why moan and complain?
Just cancel like you keep telling anyone who'll listen that's what you're going to do every single week.
It's boring, if you don't consider it good value then don't pay for it, go spend your money on anime or kool aid.
Nobody cares you're going to cancel, not even Sony care as they're literally killing it.

The only problem is, you count that title value by adding release prices of these games, while all of them are constantly on sales -20% up to -50%.

Apart from that it was not a bad year.
The question is was all of that worth what they ask for the service??

That is only the full retail price of the game. Once you factor in sale prices it drops significantly. And some games like Squad are trash, others are games that aren't interesting to me.

The terms 'value' and 'worth' seem to have lost all their meaning xD.

The only person that would have gotten $1500+ in value is the person who was going to buy all of these games for full price (but hadn't bought any of them yet even tho most of them are a few years old already).

For the average user there was maybe like $200 of value max (only counting the games they would have bought/play for the max price they woul've spend on it).

I'm sorry, but this is stupid math - it's the same math Sony promotes, but it's stupid.

Show me the same list, but use a site that tracks price history to find the lowest sale price for each game BEFORE the date it appeared on Plus, then sum that and give me THAT number. That's a more reasonable and appropriate number.

Does it take more time to do that research and math? Yes, of course it does. Does it mean anything? Not a lot - but still about 1,000x more than adding together the full MSRP prices!

I'm partial to psdeals.net - try talking to them or some of their competitors and see if they can open their database to some direct queries to track this down more easily.

EDIT: And start NOW for doing this for 2026 - fire up a spreadsheet, and on the day Sony announces next month's Essential games, go hit psdeals.net or a similar site and record the lowest sale price for the games on the list. That will make this article for 2026 a lot easier to write, with more interesting and meaningful numbers!