PlayStation has officially announced its plans for the future of PlayStation Plus.
Starting in June, PlayStation Plus will merge with PS Now to form a new subscription service. The new PS Plus will consist of three tiers – Essential, Extra and Premium. The new service will be rolled out across several months, starting in Asia before launching in North America and Europe and finally globally, with Sony hoping for the service to be live in all markets by the end of Summer this year.
PlayStation Plus Essential is similar to the current PS Plus service, with players receiving two downloadable games each month, discounts on the PlayStation Store, access to cloud storage and online multiplayer. It will also retain the current price of a Plus Subscription at £6.99/€8.99/$9.99 per month or £49.99/€59.99/$59.99 yearly.
PlayStation Plus Extra will include a catalogue of games from both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 along with all the content from PlayStation Plus Essential. Some of the games that will be available at launch in this new tier include God of War, Death Stranding, Returnal and both Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The PlayStation Plus Extra subscription will cost £10.99/€13.99/£14.99 monthly or £83.99/€99.99/$99.99 yearly.
The top tier will be named PlayStation Plus Premium and will feature all the content of the two prior tiers but will also include a wider game catalogue for both streaming and downloading. This expanded catalogue will feature a host of games from the PlayStation, PS2 and PSP generations, with cloud streaming available in select markets at launch. Players with this tier will also be able to access time-limited trials for games as well. Those currently with a PS Now subscription will be moved to the Premium tier when the service launches. PlayStation Plus Premium will be priced at £13.49/€16.99/$17.99 monthly and £99.99/€119.99/£119.99 yearly.
The new service had been seen as PlayStation’s answer to Xbox’s Game Pass subscription but there is one notable difference as there will not be any first-party exclusives launching on any tier of this new service, which is currently the case with Game Pass.
Sony has also confirmed that a Deluxe tier will be available in regions where cloud streaming is not available currently. While this tier will provide all the other benefits of the Premium tier, it will be slightly cheaper as the lack of cloud streaming will also mean there will be no access to any PS3 titles, as they are only available via cloud streaming. Sony has confirmed there are plans to expand the cloud streaming availability to other markets, with details on this to come at a later date.
Full information on the new PlayStation Plus subscription tiers and available markets can be found on the PlayStation Blog.
Words by Megan Roxburgh
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