I’ve not had playstation plus for close to 10 years at this point. Last night I looked at it again, and see it’s totally changed.
When I had PS+ on PS3, it was $60 for a year, you got 3 games per month, and if you weren’t subscribed when a game came out on PS+ then you missed out.
Last night I looked it up, and there’s 3 different tiers, with the cheapest one being $80, still gives you 3 games like before, and you get to play online.
This month, they got a sports game (which lets face it will be dramatically cheaper to buy in 3 years), a game called little creatures 2, and some harry potter game. So to me it sounds like this month would be totally skippable.
But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is just value per dollar.
I like old retro games, and the new way they set all this up, is that there is a list of always available games to download, which are retro. If you get this, you can play from about 200ish games. Many of which I saw and thought “I want to play that!”
But when you look at the cost, it goes from being must-have, to being a real thought provoker on if it’s even worth it. It costs $155 per year.
I just looked at the list of 3 games per month that you get in the lowest tier, which costs $80 per year, dating all the way back to June 2022. I saw ONE game in that amount of time that I would have otherwise bought. ONE. In a little over 2 years. Which means one year I would have gotten ONE game that I’d play, and the other year I’d have gotten exactly ZERO games I’d play.
So you look back to that highest tier which allows you to play retro games. And granted, yes, there are quite a few I’d actually play, but here’s the problem. I’m not going to play all of these at once. I don’t have time to play 12 different games at the same time anymore. These games are clearly aimed at my generation, as they mostly came out in the 90s, and early to mid 2000s. As good of a game as Worms Armegeddon is, I don’t see many teenagers today even trying it. Which is a real shame, because they’re right at the age where saying “I got worms!” is still hilarious everytime you say it.
But they’re not going to play it. I’M going to play it.
But you price the damn game in a tier that lets me play the game for 12 months. for $155.
Now, for a moment, let’s ignore the fact that I could EASILY emulate this game right now, on any modern hardware with emulators, for free. Let’s ignore that for a second, and try to do things the legal way. I just checked ebay, and if I never found my copy of Worms Armegeddon on PS1, I could buy it right now, complete in box with free shipping for $12.50. Plus tax I assume. That game will still work in my PS3. It might even work in my PS5. I’ve never tried a PS1 game in a PS5, but maybe it works? If not, I still have my PS3, which I KNOW works.
So for this $12.50, I own the game forever, and can still play it just fine in 13 months.
And I’m sure there’s many other PS1 and PS2 games in that retro list which fit similar situations. Now, considering I’m NOT going to be playing this massive list of games they provide all at once, it would stand to reason that you should stay on this service so that when you’re done with one, you can start the next. Great! One problem.
If PS1/PS2 games range from $5.00-$30.00 complete, how many of those games I was going to play can just be bought outright on ebay for $155?
At some point, I could just OWN the majority of those retro games, plus not be bound by an arbitrary list based on liscense agreements that may and do run out at any time.
So my point is, the value for these tiers starts to become less about the games themselves, and more about the ability to play online…which can be done in the lowest tier.
I agree that Sony needs money to run these online servers, but I disagree that current costs make sense. I’d rather skip the extras, and just say “Alright, let me pay $10 a year, and I’ll just get access to online play.”
Because to me, online play, and nothing more, is NOT worth $80 a year, especially considering I might go online once a month? There were times where I didn’t even turn on my PS4 for months/years at a time. Sony wants to make the concept of going online to be some big premium expense, and then wonders why over half their PS4 market never bought a PS5. It just stops being worth it at a certain age.
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Get a PC. Don’t pay to play online, get games for actual decent discounts.
PC hardware typically comes at a premium, but the savings on games makes up for it, and you will get a lot of other functionality out of it too. Upgrade when you need and your library stays with you.
Yeah but the tinkering involved with PC gaming is stopping me from making the jump.
Same with the fact that developers don’t get fixed hardware for around 7 years and you can’t know how well a game is gonna run on your computer.
For now I prefer the cheap Linux admin computer and the console for gaming.
Steam Deck really is a game changer in that regard.
Steam Deck is really tempting but I’ve seen a lot of videos where people are struggling to find settings in order to be able to play a game, especially the latest AAA games.
A Steam Deck is less powerful than a PlayStation 4, so you might not be able to play a lot of future games.
Still the concept is really tempting and I might one day buy a Steam Console or Steam Deck 2 instead of a PlayStation 6 depending on the direction Sony is taking.
I also love the fact that Valve is supporting Linux.
I’m not a fan of pc gaming, but I got a deck to easily play older pc games and whatever isn’t on PS5. The thing is a gateway drug. Now my PS5 is just for high-end games and most of everything else I just get in steam sales. Plus there’s that emulation thing…
You can avoid most tinkering if you buy a prebuilt and mostly use Steam for games. I bought my last one from cyberpowerpc.com and other than some occasional cleaning I don’t really mess with the hardware. Steam detects all my different controllers, so the only time I mess with much else is if I want to play something that uses a different store front or launcher (last I checked Ubisoft, Rockstar, and EA dont know how to handle playstation controllers on windows so you need a 3rd party app for that called DS4Windows). I would like to jump to linux, and I will admit that I’ve been too busy for the amount of tinkering and adjustment I expect that to involve.
Sometimes, every once in a while I fiddle with graphics settings to get a smoother frame rate. Admittedly that can be daunting initially. Many modern games will autodetect. Nvidia has a wonky program that I use to auto-optimize when I’m feeling lazy, I will run that and then adjust from there. Games generally look good enough now that it doesn’t bother me if I’m not running everything at max settings, I just lock in 120 or 144 FPS and away I go.
If you don’t want tinkering, you can avoid a lot of it.
Buy prebuilt PCs, use the driver assistant of the manufacturers of your parts. Install windows (yeah I know where I am, but for gaming it is less tinkering). And then just have fun playing. I didn’t tinker with my PC for 3 years now and can play every game.
It’s certainly not for everybody, but I find it’s worthwhile to pay for the middle tier one for the catalog of games available. I get the same ones as the lowest tier, but then there’s also a rotating catalog like a Netflix supply. Right now I’m playing The Plucky Squire for free* and it just came out. Also been playing Watchdogs 2.
I’ve tried a ton of games I was curious about but not curious enough to want to buy, and then I felt zero remorse for not finishing them because I could just cut my losses when I stopped having fun or they overstayed their welcome. When I buy a game, I feel a sort of pressure to see it through since I paid for it; with this subscription I can just stop, delete it, and try another one. I’ve paid for access to all of it so the most effective use of the money I’ve spent is to play whatever I’m most interested in. Some games have been less than an hour of enjoyment, but others like Tinykins and Ghost of Tsushima and The Forgotten City have been total obsessions.
I’m generally not interested in playing new games, so this is sorta perfect for me. it’s like the price of two new games per year, but I’m playing like two dozen, and I have zero guilt about losing interest and not finishing them. I’m just straight up not buying games because of this deal. Totally not for everybody, but a great option for some of us.
PS Plus was always like this, maybe they only had one tier before and the prices have been jacked up since but it was always the case that the free games each month were trash and nothing anyone really wanted to play. I used to pay back in the Vita days and would “claim” everything I could but I very rarely played anything they gave away.
I had PS+ on the PS 3 & 4 when they moved to the new system.
I was grandfathered in and got the top tier for a lower tier price, and even then it was hard to justify.
I’m sticking to Steam for the most part these days, and using consoles for retro gaming. Excellent PS3 and early PS4 games can be picked up for cheap.
I think essentials is a waste of money but extra is well worth it. You only have to play a few games a year to completion and it’s paid for itself, and then you still get the monthly games (that honestly aren’t that good most of the time now to be honest -the best time for that was when PS3, Vita and PS4 were all getting 2 games each every month)
Just for online play, no it isn’t worth it. Especially if most of the games you want to play are F2P; F2P games don’t need PS+ to play online.
But I do think the year of PS+ Premium, for access to the big library of games, is. For less than $200 you can get like $1000+ worth of value if you play a lot of games. If you were to just buy games outright, for the same cost of a year as PS+ Premium you’d only get 2 new games ($70 each) and maybe something on sale or an indie/AA game.
if you play a lot of games.
That’s just my point though. I DON’T play a lot of games at once. I can barely find time to play 1 day a week. I’m almost never home, because in this world you need to work multiple jobs, and sleep at work. I get home, I don’t even have energy to make dinner. I just drink a water, and half the time pass out in my recliner before I even turn on the tv.
But for that 1 game at a time that I play, that means I’m paying $155 per 12 months, for a game that came out in 1999. Or maybe I might move on, and play a second game. Which, on average would have come out probably between 1996-2003? So, let’s be generous. Lets say I play 4 games in that 12 month span. 4 games, all of which are going to be easily over 20 years old, plus the ability to play modern games online.
…for $155 per 12 month cycle.
For gamers that DON’T spend a lot of time gaming, there is no PS+ tier for me. And I suspect it’s because if they DID offer a $10 per year, just online play, nothing else option, they’d lose money because everybody would switch to it. The older gamers like me are probably all smart to understand that physical media lasts longer than 12 months, and I assume the younger generation doesn’t give a shit about games like Dark Cloud or Summoner. So the only base that I can imagine this plan is geared towards is someone who has absolutely no obligations in life. No school. No Work. 100% of the time is free time, and damn near all of it is playing video games…and I fail to see who that person is.
You can generally get a deal on the basic ps plus which gets you it for cheaper. They tend to be around Christmas and black Friday in the UK at least. That makes it about the price of one game per year for online which isn’t too bad for my budget. I do agree that it’s silly to play for access to our own internet but that’s what the consoles all do now so unless everyone switches to pc we are stuck with it. I also tend strongly towards patient gaming so the monthly games are often ones I’ve been waiting to come up for cheap. Little nightmares 2 this month was the only one I was interested in but we’ve recently had Tunic which was excellent.
I owned a Sony console up to the PS4 and the last one I played online on was the PS3, since I refused to pay for multiplayer. If games stayed in your library without requiring a subscription it would seem like deal at least. I wish Sony users had shown more backlash against it, but Xbox pushing for an online only console at the time understandably got more criticism and press. So it just quietly got accepted without resistance.
The problem with gamers is that generally they will complain about something and then buy it anyways. That’s why the industry does what it does. I too wish there was more backlash about many things.
Pretty much where I’m at. I think I had PS+ for 1 year as a gift someone got me. And if I got to just KEEP the games? Yeah, ok. Fair enough. I would rather trade 3 random games for the ability for me to pick 1 game myself, but that’s beyond the point. Other than the 1 gift subscription, which I didn’t end up playing the free games much anyways, I haven’t bought PS+.
This is precisely why this is my last PSPlus membership. I will let my substantial gaming library go away, and I will wind up selling my PS5 and all of my PS5 and PS4 physical games.
I am unfortunately in the process of building a console replacement PC.
Now that Sony is releasing all their best games on PC, there isn’t much reason not to anymore. I personally have a PS5 because I already sit at my computer too much and that way my kids can use it too. I understand the complaints about PSPlus but to me it’s like splurging on a bunch of Steam games I’ll never play. Because Sony released their best games on PS Plus it saves me money because now I’ve been trained not to buy anything. They added Plucky Squire and Road 96 this month and we’ve had fun playing those.
I’m paying around 70$ for the base PlayStation plus in Switzerland and I’m happy with the games I’m getting for free with it. It allowed me to discover quite a few games I’d have never tried otherwise.
If it gets more expensive, I might clearly cancel it, but now I still feel like it’s a good deal.
I’m more worried about the prices of console hardware going up and almost equaling a pc while still having to pay for online or stuff like that…
You can’t change Sony, all you can do is vote with your wallet. $40 was already a ripoff, but $80 to play games I already paid for, online, is robbery. The PS5 is my last Sony console unless they reverse this decision, and I canceled my Plus months ago.
I just want to say that I’m in a similar place in my life, and I agree with your assessment of cost vs value of PS+. I dropped my subscription because I just don’t play much outside of the Steam Deck these days.
If I get an itch to play something that is in my library from my previous PS+ subscription, I think I’ll just pay for a single month.
My PS5 was a waste of money NGL
I skipped PS4 so I at least got to play RDR2 for the first time. But it’s been a year since I’ve played it. It mainly gets used by 7 year old playing Rocket league and Roblox but otherwise I never play it anymore.
It’s mostly time but also the fact that the games are not good either. I’d never consider paying for PSplus
Agreed, it’s a horrendous scam. Thanks, Microsoft!
But you can’t really blame console companies for doing it, because people pay for it. Almost free money for them.
The exception would be those people who are able to actually play all or most of the subscription games on the service. I can see it being a good value in that case.
You forgot that most retro games have to be streamed.
A PS1 or PS2 game any decent washing machine could run these days, has to be streamed because my PS5 is unable to emulate 20years old Hardware. Lagging and with compression artifacts…
Or you could just put it in your PS2.
I would, if I could… Maybe the HDMI Mod is worth it. (?)
Go to a second hand store and get a TV with the right connectors.
I would like to, but I have no good “play space” for such a TV… or space at all in my expensive cozy little shoe carton)
Maybe you’d be better of with an emulator? Ive played up to ps3 games on my pc.
