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.
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XBGP has ... a bit over 300 games? Sony will have double that.
And XBGP Day 1 titles are mostly first party titles, not typically from third party developers. And games that get given away early tend to have abysmal sales... so I can see why Sony would be sensitive towards their developers - the subscription model right now just can't compensate as well as those early Full Retail Price sales that AAA consoles titles can get when they are decent titles. Not to say that it might not be able to in the future, or with a few tweaks, but right now I don't think it can compare.
So, I don't know if it would deteriorate the quality of games, but I can see the concern... I'm not entirely white knighting Sony here, but I wouldn't exactly go out and say that everything that MS is doing with XBGP is better than what Sony is proposing either.
If I even get a PS5 when it actually comes out, I'll probably just buy the two or three interesting exclusives that comes out during its lifetime.
Switch OLED and XBSS have been in for a while. XBSX has started to have some stock - not steady yet, but it isn’t getting blown through in seconds when it does drop. But no PS5 anywhere apart for the usual drops that are instantly gone in a blur of crashes web sites.
But I've never seen a PS5 in regular retail inventory. Even after locking them behind their VIP program, Best Buy still sells out instantly -- scalpers say it's just made it easier for them.