There has been rumblings of Sony announcing a new PS Plus/PS Now service for a while. And the first news of it is here: an all-new tier-based PlayStation Plus, rolling out in June.
With the new PlayStation Plus service, PS Now – Sony’s current monthly games subscription service – will cease to exist. Instead, its service will be rolled into the higher tiers of PS Plus. But this isn’t just a case of PS Plus and PS Now joining forces; the service is being expanded and improved to offer a bigger library than ever. The full scope is yet to be revealed, and we’ll find out more over the next couple of months.
But today, on the PlayStation Blog, Sony has revealed the three new tiers coming to PlayStation Plus and the benefits they will include. They are as follows:
PlayStation Plus Essential
- £6.99/$8.99 a month or £49.99/$59.99 a year (the same price as current PS Plus)
- The same benefits that PS Plus currently offers: two monthly games, discounts, cloud storage, online multiplayer access
PlayStation Plus Extra
- £10.99/$14.99 a month or £83.99/$99.99 a year
- Everything that PS Plus Essential offers
- Access to a downloadable catalogue of up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games
PlayStation Plus Premium
- £13.49/$17.99 a month or £99.99/$19.99 a year
- Everything that PlayStation Plus Extra offers
- A library of PS3 games via cloud streaming
- A catalogue of PS1, PS2 and PSP games available for download
- Cloud streaming options on PC and PS4/PS5 consoles for PS1, PS2, PSP and PS4 games
If you already have PS Plus, that will become PS Plus Essential. And if you already have PS Now, your subscription will become PlayStation Plus Premium with no initial increase to your subscription fee at launch.
What games will be on PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium?
A full list of games has yet to be revealed, and will be something that we find out from Sony closer to the service’s launch. For now, we know that Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11 and Returnal will all be available at launch. Sony has also stated that it’s working closely with first party developers and third-party studios to “include some of the best gaming experiences available” and the library will “be regularly refreshed”.
Will first party PlayStation games be available on PS Plus day one?
Broadly, that’s a no. In an interview published on GamesIndustry.biz, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan explained that putting games into a subscription service at day one would make their current level of investment impossible. In other words, it would be at a detriment to the quality of the games released. From GamesIndustry.biz, Ryan said:
“[In terms of] putting our own games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release… as you well know, this is not a road that we’ve gone down in the past. And it’s not a road that we’re going to go down with this new service. We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want.”
That’s not to say we won’t get any games coming to PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium at launch. After all, we’ve just had Shadow Warrior 3 launch into PS Now on day one. But Sony won’t be taking the same approach as Microsoft with its Xbox Game Pass service; currently, Xbox Game Pass subscribers can play every first party title on day one.
Stay tuned for more information about the new PlayStation Plus tiers. We don’t have a set launch date yet outside of a June window. But Sony will be releasing more information over the next couple of months. Until then, both services will continue operating as normal.
