PlayStation has officially confirmed that it is rebranding PlayStation Plus to have three tiers, moving towards a Game Pass style system.
PlayStation Plus will now have three tiers titled Essential, Plus Extra, and Plus Premium. Essential is the same service currently offered by Sony and will keep the same cost of £6.99 a month (or £19.99 quarterly/ £49.99 yearly), with access to two downloadable games, exclusive discounts, cloud storage, and online multiplayer access.
PlayStation Plus Extra will have an increased cost of £10.99 a month, £31.99 quarterly, and £83.99 yearly. According to the official blog announcement, benefits include everything inessential, as well as a “catalogue of up to 400 of the most enjoyable PS4 and PS5 games.” This includes titles from its PlayStation Studios catalogue as well as third-party games. It also specifies that games in the Extra tier will be downloadable for play.
PlayStation Plus Premium will have a further increased cost of £13.49 monthly, £39.99 quarterly, or £99.99 yearly. At this tier, subscribers will have everything included in the Essential and Plus tiers. It adds up to 340 titles of additional games, which includes PS3 games available to play via cloud streaming, and a number of PS1, PS2, and PSP games that will have streaming and download options. There will also be time-limited game trials for certain titles at this tier.
All-new PlayStation Plus launches in June with three flexible membership options.
First details: https://t.co/2KXcEp7XWs pic.twitter.com/jAU9Do3CfE
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) March 29, 2022
The blog notes that this new version of PlayStation Plus will include titles like Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Returnal. It also confirms that PlayStation Now will be shuttering and transferring into the new PlayStation Plus offering. Current PlayStation Now subscribers will migrate over to PlayStation Plus Premium with no increase to their current subscription fees.
This new iteration of PlayStation Plus will begin to roll out in June, in a phased regional approach starting with Asia and followed by North America, Europe, and the rest of the world where PlayStation Plus is offered. PlayStation plans to have the service fully up and running by the end of the first half of 2022.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan spoke about putting the company’s biggest titles on this new version of PlayStation Plus on day one, saying, “In terms of putting our own 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.” This marks a contrast from Xbox‘s approach with Game Pass, which offers titles like Halo Infinite available from day one.
In other news, Apex Legends is getting a PS5 and Xbox Series X|S update today (March 29), bringing 4K and HDR output, 60Hz gameplay, higher resolution shadows and longer draw distances.
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