The rumors were indeed true. Sony has come out and officially announced a competitor to Xbox Game Pass. Yet, rather than launch an all new service, it’s merging existing ones together as one to take on Microsoft and offer PlayStation gamers more choice and value for their money.
Coming in June, the all new PlayStation Plus subscription service will have a couple of different tiers. Sony hopes that the new tiers will “provide more choice to customers,” as well as “high-quality, curated content with a diverse portfolio of games.”
Unfortunately, though, this still won’t include first-party games at launch, which is what makes Xbox Game Pass so unique. The new PlayStation Plus will be divided into Essential, Extra, and Premium. Essential is the bare minimum, Extra falls in between, and Premium is at the top. Here’s what each tier costs and gets gamers.
- Essential: $10 a month, $60 a year: Same as current PlayStation Plus. Includes two monthly downloadable games, discounts, cloud storage for saves, and online multiplayer.
- Plus Extra: $15 a month $100 a year: All benefits of Essential, plus 400 PS4 and PS5 games that can be downloaded to play. Includes games from PlayStation Studios, and third-party games, too.
- Premium: $18 a month $120 a year: Everything in Essential, Extra, plus 340 additional games, PS3 games via the cloud, PS2 and PSP classics via the cloud. Trials on this tier to try games before buying. Customers can stream games using PS4 and PS5 and also on PC.
In addition to the three main tiers, Sony is also planning to launch PlayStation Plus Deluxe in select markers. This is for markets without cloud streaming, and it will be offered at a lower cost to Premium with the ability to download and play classic PlayStation, PS2, and PSP games.
At launch, Sony will include titles such as Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal. Once the service is fully rolled out, PlayStation Now will transition to PlayStation Plus and will be phased out. PlayStation Now customers will also get PlayStation Plus Premium with no increase.
