While PlayStation Plus Premium, the most expensive tier, is growing slowly, the middle level, PlayStation Plus Extra, does so faster.

Unfortunately, it is the truth. PlayStation Plus Premium has more PlayStation 3 games (running from the cloud), while PS2 titles are not expanding after moving the PlayStation 4’s PS2 Classics games. In contrast, PS1 and PSP games are at white raven levels of rarity without many signs of expansion. One step down, PlayStation Plus Extra is a different story, but there are gaps here, too. There were more games on PlayStation Now than on PS Plus Extra.

Three hundred games disappeared during the PlayStation Plus change, and around 250 became unavailable on a subscription basis when the three-tier model was introduced. Shuhei Yoshida, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Head of Independent Developer Initiative, explained to MCV why such a vast thinning occurred: “When we transitioned from the old PlayStation Plus [model] to the new, we looked at the whole catalog of games that were included in PlayStation Now, and we didn’t just move these games to PlayStation Plus Extra, we completely revisited the list and tried to create the ‘Best of’ collection of high-quality games from indies to AAAs. So I believe over 100 high-quality games are now available in the PlayStation Plus Extra tier.”

Some of the initially removed games (e.g., Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Bentley’s Hackpack) have returned, but there may be other reasons for the removal. Most of the first fifty-six games that left PlayStation Plus are tied to three publishers, so there may be contractual reasons behind the departures. Sony says it is continuing to expand its offering, which led to more than 400 games on PlayStation Plus Extra and a further 300 titles on PlayStation Premium.

However, we still feel that retro games are not being expanded enough, and PS3 games are not something we would include under the term “retro.” A lot of Sony’s IP could easily be moved over from the PS1, as it’s easy to emulate…

Source: PSL