PS Plus Has 'Surpassed Expectations' Since Becoming More Like Xbox Game Pass
"The engagement we see from it is really positive"
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Cast your mind back to 2022, and you may remember that PlayStation Plus was basically like Xbox Live Gold at the time, dishing out free games (and admittedly better free games) every month while also offering a PlayStation Now option that had historically been more focused on streamable titles rather than native downloads.
However, PS Plus was then rebranded into a service providing three tiers' worth of benefits, with the new Extra and Premium tiers feeling similar to Xbox Game Pass in how they provided a library of games for a certain fee per-month.
We actually highlighted the similarities and differences between the two here at Pure Xbox:
Now, three years later, the vice president of global services at PlayStation (Nick Maguire) has revealed Sony's enthusiasm about the Xbox Game Pass style structure, stating that the overhaul to PlayStation Plus has "surpassed our expectations" and has led to engagement that has "never been higher than it is right now" for the service.
Here's a bit of what he had to say about this in an interview with Game File this week:
“It's really given us a new way to reach the audiences with these games, and it's given new value to partners to find new people to play their titles. And just the engagement we see from it is really positive, in terms of the number of people choosing that Catalog and coming back month after month.”
Later in the interview, Maguire advised that Sony wants to keep investing in the service to "bring more value to users", pointing out that the two most expensive tiers (Extra and Premium) are experiencing "high growth" right now.
PlayStation Plus is undoubtedly here to stay as a competitor to Xbox Game Pass, then, although the one major difference is Sony's reluctance to put first-party titles into the program at launch. Maguire says the focus will remain on "bringing games in when they're 12, 18 months old or older" aside from certain "day-and-date" indie games, as it's a balance that's "working really well across the platform".
