PlayStation Plus Premium & Extra: That’s not enough! – Opinion with video

With a delay of a few weeks, the time has now come in Europe: Sony has finally rolled out its new PS Plus system. The regular service with online gaming, save data cloud and three monthly free games will be renamed PS Plus Essential. In addition, there are now two new options, each containing a catalog of modern titles and old classics. Although the offer should be a no-brainer for a Playstation disciple like me, the whole story leaves me rather ambivalent so far.

With the new subscription options, PS Plus will mainly be expanded to include the features and games that were previously part of Playstation Now. In case you don’t remember: PS Now, that was this not particularly successful game subscription from Sony, which was mainly characterized by PS4 games from the junk box and a pretty lousy streaming service and is now logically no longer offered. But first things first – what exactly does the service formerly known as “Project Spartacus” have to offer?

The second option, Playstation Plus Extra, gives you a 400-title catalog of PS4 and PS5 games that you can download and play as normal. The whole thing is priced at a whopping 14 euros a month, or not quite so hefty 100 euros a year. For this amount of games, that actually sounds like an unbeatable deal – but you should be aware that you’re not necessarily getting the crème de la crème of the modern Playstation lineup here.

Horizon Forbidden West is one of the games that you can try out for a short time with the most expensive subscription option. After all, part one with an add-on is included in the extra subscription.

Source: PC Games

That means: In addition to isolated hits like Spider Man, Demon’s Souls and Ghost of Tsushima, there are games that every reasonably interested gamer has had at home for years anyway. And anyone who, like me, has been a PS Plus subscriber since the last generation of consoles has even received most of these top-class games as a gift. In contrast to its competitor Microsoft, not even Sony’s own brands are fully included. There’s only part one of Horizon, Bloodborne is missing its fantastic expansion. Brands like The Last of Us, The Order 1886 or Driveclub are missing completely. For Uncharted fans, the extra subscription only has part four and Lost Legacy up its sleeve. But not in their PS5 versions!

Who hasn’t, who… Oh, everyone has.

The range of third-party manufacturers is also a somewhat outdated patchwork quilt: Ubisoft has Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on offer, but series such as Watch Dogs and The Division are only represented with their first parts. Far Cry only has part four and the lousy ports of part three and Blood Dragon. Bethesda has credited itself with Fallout 4 and 76, Wolfenstein: The New Order and Doom 2016, but it wasn’t enough for Skyrim or the PlayStation-exclusive Deathloop. Now there’s no question that I’m not necessarily the target group for the new PS Plus with the huge library I’ve built up over the years through sales and free games.

Because Sony has never planned to sell its exclusive games Day One as a subscription, the service will probably remain rather uninteresting for someone like me in the future. After all: The chic cat adventure Stray comes into service on the day of publication. That doesn’t sound like Microsoft’s confidence. No, that sounds more like a bait offer for a mediocre service, like Nintendo’s online expansion pack.

Nevertheless: If you enter the Playstation ecosystem for the first time, you get the opportunity to at least catch up on the no longer up-to-date first-party highlights at a fair price. However, you still have to consider that 19 of the most important PS4 classics are still included in the so-called PS Plus Collection. You can still access them with a PS5 and a regular PS Plus subscription. Incidentally, this also includes The Last of Us Remastered, which is missing from PS Plus Extra. Although most of the other PS Plus Collection games are also included with PS Plus Extra – but not all.