PlayStation is set to launch its brand-new PS Plus subscription service with multiple tiers in just a few weeks, but something that gamers haven’t been happy with is how it won’t offer day-one titles, one of the most notable perks of Microsoft’s competing Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass services. New insight on why PlayStation decided to do things differently comes by way of executive Hiroki Toki, who suggested to investors during a financial call this week that a similar strategy would result in lower-quality titles, as the company would probably have to reduce budgets. PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has said something similar in the past, explaining that Sony wouldn’t be able to invest in their games in the same way if they went the day-one route for its subscription service.
“I will refrain from making comments on the competitors’ strategy,” Totoki said. “Our current thinking is to have development costs [and] appropriate R&D investment for quality products, and that will improve the platform and also improve the business in the long run.”
“AAA type titles on PS5, if we distribute that on the subscription services, we may need to shrink the investment needed for that and that will deteriorate the first-party title quality and that is our concern.”
“So, we want to make sure we spend the appropriate development costs to have solid products/titles to be introduced in the right manner.”
During the same call, it was revealed Sony is looking to spend another 40bn yen (roughly £249m/$308m) on its first-party games.
PlayStation owners who have subscriptions to both PS Plus and PS Now will be upgraded to its PS Plus Premium tier for the longer of their two subscriptions.
This means anyone still with an active Now subscription who has also stacked a PS Plus sub for months (or even years) to come will get converted to Premium for as long as their existing Plus sub is set last.