This looks like a trial balloon to me. There are too many important unanswered questions and I believe that they’re measuring public opinion to see how much they can “get away” with. Don’t like that as a turn of phrase but it’s the closest thing that comes to mind.
This isn’t super exciting to me, and I hope that it doesn’t interfere too much with Game Pass as I know it. That said, I hope that they do the same thing as MS where they permanently* put first-party games in, even after a delay. Then I could just get a subscription for one or two months and blast through anything I missed by borrowing a friend’s PS5.
It would be cool if they were to let you buy previous-gen games separately, and it would be really cool if you could carry forward the purchases you had made in the past. It’s not exactly as nice without access to those old saves, but it’s something. I don’t expect the latter to happen sadly, and it would really be the final nail in the coffin as far as I’m concerned. I was burned hard by my seemingly orphaned PSP/3/Vita purchases, and bringing the games back without acknowledgement of my ownership would be a real slap in the face. I’m all in on digital and a big reason I switched to Xbox is because they treat your purchases well. Learning about all the great work the BC team has done to improve old games made me wonder if it would be possible to improve “present” games on the next console.
It would be nice to have access to some of those old games that are trapped on older systems (e.g. MGS4 and PoOps, Tokyo Jungle, 3D Dot Game Heroes), but looking at how they’ve handled stuff like generational transitions (contrasted to Smart Delivery) I don’t have a ton of faith in Sony’s ability to implement this well/seamlessly. Get your shit together and make a PS3 emulator already Sony, you have the talent and the information. I’m not interested in prevarications about system architecture.
I obviously don’t have access to the data or the knowledge to interpret them correctly, but the conversion seems like a real missed opportunity for me (point not based in reality, see post below). The conversion deal is an absolute masterstroke by MS. When I took the plunge on Game Pass two years ago, I would have been totally content with just the console version. I’m not interested in playing games online or on PC. But I learned about the conversion trick and now I don’t want to give up Ultimate. They gave me a taste of the best they had to offer and improved it during those two years and now yeah, I do think it’s worth the extra money. I’m still not interested in online multiplayer or PC, but I do care about EA Play and cloud streaming even though I don’t use them that much. In essence I went from “Huh this seems neat, it might even save me money in the long run. I could try a month here and there” to “Oh wow, I can’t believe they let me get away with all this for that little money” to “Game Pass is indispensable”
As a direct competitor to Game Pass, it’s not blowing me away. Am I right in thinking that the Extra tier ($100/y) is equivalent to Game Pass for console ($120)? I’d rather pay the extra twenty bucks and get first-party games. I do hope they’ll get rid of the ridiculous cloud storage restriction they have while they’re overhauling things.
I stand corrected, thanks for letting me know! So that would mean someone with a year of PS Now ($60) would have it converted to a year of PS+ Premium ($120)?
Now I have to scroll up to post number one to see which exact tier that is…
PS Plus Essentials = PS+
PS Plus Extra = PS+ and downgraded content of PS Now but no streaming at all
PS Plus Premium = PS+ and PS Now entire content and maybe some more stuff going forward
So current PS Now subs converted to PS Plus Premium is a pretty decent deal for the users. But What happens to the PS+ subscription, is the time added on? If you currently have 6 months of PS+ and 6 months of PSNow what do you end up with? Is it 6 months of PS Plus Essentials and 6 months of PS Plus Premium?
Explains why they remove the cards before announcing this. You can imagine many subscribing it with cheaper price. Although can you still buy it via online store or not?
Sony is a genius because they know how to get the most profits from the perspective of them being the leader in console space and media popularity… I may sound like a PS fan boy (which I am not) but it is a fact.
Sony’s clever tricks work.
I will give you an example, they used next gen only against Xbox during the early hype cycle of PS5 only to reverse the decision and make cross gen games longer then xbox actually
This time, with day and date games they are going to do the same thing… They have positioned the service towards day and date already with addition of the game demos while taking a jab at the Xbox Gamepass that the quality of there games would suffer if they bring games day and date
Once again they are going against Xbox, making them look bad compared to PS only to do the same thing later on which Xbox is already doing right now
They will release day and date games in coming 2-3 years on the PlayStation Plus premium
They already setup the highest teir for that, which mind you is equivalent to Gamepass ultimate in price but will only offer feature of Gamepass console (no PC and ea play)
They know how to address their console base folks and have planned everything accordingly while also making the competition look bad…
That being said, this wont matter for us Xbox players and we know what Sony is up to… But it is about the market… Market favours them and will continue to do so
Only, the first party release which Xbox is preparing from mid 2022 onwards could change things… If they deliver
I think the landscape is changing. Much of Sony’s strategy is dependent on them being market leader. The console shortage has allowed Nintendo to run away with this generation and has allowed Xbox to essentially tie PS5 in sales for the foreseeable future.
Xbox Bethesda acquisition kicks off in a big way with Starfield. Forza Horizon 5 is a runaway hit with all ages. The Gamepass smart tv app will be massive. Activision being part of Gamepass can have a short term impact because Call of Duty games are evergreen, so their addition to Gamepass is not exactly insignificant either. Xbox has a bright future. PlayStation needs to have a big summer show to get me exited about it’s future. Selling out every PS5 is good for the company and all but as someone who’s had the PS5 since 2020 I thought there would be more games at this point. At least stop making PS4 games for f*sakes.
Depending on what happens with the current surge in availability of the Series X, Xbox could very well outsell PlayStation before long. I feel pretty certain they’ll at least outsell it for the months of March and April. Remains to be seen if they can keep up their supply, and how long the PS5 will be supply constrained.
