According to Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s president and CEO, their pricing model would not allow their exclusive games to be available on the redesigned PlayStation Plus from launch day.
Here we’ve already reported how Sony is redesigning PlayStation Plus, which does indeed have more subscription tiers. We won’t repeat ourselves here but will focus on Ryan’s interview with Gamesindustry.
“[In terms of] putting our games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release… as you well know, this is not a road that we’ve gone down in the past. And it’s not a road that we’re going to go down with this new service. We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle would be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games we make would not be something gamers want.
The way the world is changing so very quickly at the moment, nothing is forever. Who would have said even four years ago that you would see AAA PlayStation IP being published on PC? […] So I don’t want to cast anything in stone at this stage. All I’m talking about today is the approach we’re taking in the short term. The way our publishing model works right now; it doesn’t make any sense. But things can change very quickly in this industry, as we all know,” Ryan said.
Ryan also talked about the highest tier of PlayStation Plus, PS Plus Premium, which will cost €14 a month, but if you pay for a year in advance, you can spend an average of €10 a month on the service. According to him, “It is a fact — for our services at least — that most people subscribe through a 12-month subscription. It’s more than two-thirds subscribe that way. That is an area of a value proposition that we have looked at very hard. We are delivering that for a 12-month subscriber, which is the great majority of people. The monthly subscription rate for PlayStation Plus Extra will be $8.33. And for PlayStation Plus Premium, it will be $9.99. We think this is a terrific value proposition for what people are going to get. And one that wouldn’t be possible if we were to put our studios’ games into the service upon their release.”
Regardless, it’s safe to say that Sony will be way behind Microsoft in this area. So it will be interesting to see how PlayStation Plus develops throughout 2022…
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