Sony has good news to share their shareholders about PlayStation Plus.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, 30 % of all PlayStation Plus users are now in the Extra or Premium tiers.
While the Basic tier of PlayStation Plus offers the basics of online functionality, the Extra tiers adds a library of PlayStation 4 games that are playable on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
The Premium tier is what gives consumers access to the classic PlayStation library, as well as game trials. This Premium tier faced criticism because Sony opted to use the cloud to offer PlayStation 3 games, instead of finding a way to emulate them on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
We had previously reported that their subscriber numbers dipped from 47.4 million to 45.3 million users. At this time, the service was still quite fresh, and faced several issues. In particular, there were launch issues with their programs to make their games playable on PC and mobile via the cloud.
As of March 31, 2023, PlayStation Plus is back to 47.4 million subscribers. It certainly sounds like Sony swayed their users to finally come back to the service, without making new changes to their offerings.
Of course, we should remember that 70 % of all these users are still on the Basic tier. It’s possible that most subscribers simply wanted to go back to playing online, and were not necessarily won over by PlayStation Plus’ new offerings.
Still, the new numbers Sony is touting does indicate they have more income coming in from those higher PlayStation Plus tiers now. It also means that, in proportion, they make more money per PlayStation Plus subscriber than before.
It’s also an indication of the progress Sony has gotten since Microsoft suddenly overtook them on game subscriptions over the past few years. This is something even Sony acknowledges, albeit in context of the Microsoft-Activision deal.
In lobbying for the deal to be rejected, Sony told the CMA that there was no doubt that Game Pass was well ahead of PlayStation Plus.
Beyond Sony’s agenda in the Microsoft – Activision deal, however, Sony surely was looking for ways to catch up to Microsoft in this field.
As it stands, PlayStation Plus does have a robust library of games, modern and classic alike. While Microsoft has leveraged their lead to get some small and mid-tier games on their Game Pass platform first, and even exclusive to Xbox, Sony has also successfully leveraged their partners to build that library.
