We have reason to believe God of War Ragnarok will be getting a game trial very soon on PlayStation Plus.
Twitter account PlayStation Game Size caught this very listing, simply described as
“PS Plus Premium New Trial
– God of War Ragnarök (3-hour)”
This listing didn’t include a file size, but this same account confirmed that God of War Ragnarok would be over 90 GB on PlayStation 4. So it’s possible that availing of the trial will require you to download the full game in its entirety rather than having you download a smaller separate demo for it.
As for why Sony would still have to do this for God of War Ragnarok, one of the biggest games of 2022, one of the biggest games by sales on both PlayStation consoles, and a GOTY contender for upcoming awards shows, well, it’s complicated.
There’s no doubt that PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 make a lot of money for Sony, on the software and hardware end. However, the situation that they company had in the previous three console generations no longer exists. They no longer make enough money on the sale of their games on their own consoles to justify the scale and cost of these games.
If this sounds like news to you, it really shouldn’t. While SIE head Jim Ryan uses less severe language nowadays, two years ago he laid it straight. This is how he explained it to Venturebeat:
“The cost of making games goes up with each cycle, as the calibre of the IP has improved. Also, our ease of making it available to non-console owners has grown. So it’s a fairly straightforward decision for us to make.”
So, not only God of War Ragnarok, but also Spider-Man and Horizon, and their future games, including Wolverine, all have this in common. They have all become incredibly more expensive to make, as expectations for these games run high. Subsequently, it becomes harder for Sony to make more money this way.
So in the immediate future, Sony will sell God of War Ragnarok hard to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners who still haven’t bought the game. That will definitely include sales and an eventual price drop. Ultimately, however, Sony will also port God of War Ragnarok to PC as well. This, of course, falls in line with Jim’s statements about where he wants PlayStation software to be this year.
In any case, if you’re a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 owner, you don’t have to worry about any of that yourself. If you’ve held out this long to buy the game, you can give it a try soon. You can also expect a series of sales and possible price drops, but it may also eventually make it to PC.