Speaker 1: Sony is revamping PlayStation plus the subscription service to get games on your PlayStation five and PlayStation four. And of course they've taken one product and turned it into three, three tiers of PlayStation plus service. I'm gonna explain what that all means and how it relates to their other service PlayStation now, which is the name you may not hear much after today
Speaker 1: For a while now we've really considered Xbox game pass and Xbox game pass ultimate to be really the best game subscription [00:00:30] service. You get a ton of content. You get played on your Xbox. You can cloud game it PC games and the ultimate version, uh, and a lot of brand new games like halo, infinite coming to the service on day one. Now Sony has had its own version called PlayStation plus for just about as long, but it doesn't really offer the same level of content. They give you, you know, two games a month, uh, from a, from a pretty big list that you can download and keep as long as you're a member, you get online multiplayer access, uh, you get cloud saves and on the PlayStation [00:01:00] five, there's a nice little catalog of about a dozen or so pretty nifty games that you can access and play.
Speaker 1: But that's really about it at the same time. Sony somewhat confusingly had a whole separate service called PlayStation now, which was their version of cloud gaming, where games are played on remote service somewhere. And it just beams it to you kind of like Google stadia or invi chief force now, but that was a separate subscription you had to pay for on top of PlayStation plus. And the two things sort of existed in their own silos. [00:01:30] Not together now, they're kind of coming together depending on which tier of PlayStation plus new service that you get. So it's broken down into three tiers. Now I went to the old whiteboard to break it down for you. If you have PlayStation plus today, that's basically gonna be PlayStation plus essential the basic tier, still $60 a year. And for that, you get, uh, Sony's choice of two different games a month that you can download and keep you get cloud saves for your games.
Speaker 1: And of course, online multiplayer, uh, cuz you have to have a subscription to get [00:02:00] your console online, to play multiplayer games. Now, if you trade up to the next level that is PlayStation plus extra, that's gonna be a hundred dollars a year. And this feels the most like Xbox game pass in that it adds this catalog of 400 extra games. Uh, I don't know exactly what's in the catalog yet, but these are again games that you can download and keep on your local console for as long as you are a member of PlayStation plus extra. So if you're thinking of Microsoft has Xbox game pass and has this big library, PlayStation has [00:02:30] PlayStation plus this is the tier that most closely resembles that. And then there's a new top top end tier that is PlayStation plus premium. And this is $120 a year. And if you think about PlayStation now and the cloud streaming service, that that is that not a lot of people even really know about.
Speaker 1: A lot of that seems to get pulled into this because in addition to all the stuff here and all the stuff here, you also get an extra catalog. Sony says right now it's 340 games. And a lot of that is retro stuff. PlayStation three [00:03:00] games, PlayStation, two games, PSP games, even, uh, some of which are downloadable, some of which are gonna be cloud streaming. And that's where the PlayStation now services come in. And Sony also says some new games are gonna offer you trials kind of a try before you buy things. Sony is not going quite as far as Microsoft to, as the company has even already said that you're not gonna see the biggest, uh, you know, day one AAA games on the subscription service right away. That's gonna cannibalize their actual individual games. [00:03:30] Now still very important, but everybody knows that we really are moving to a subscription model, just like movies have with Netflix and Hulu and on prime video, uh, and games really have to a reasonable degree with, uh, Nintendo switch online and Xbox game pass and all the versions of that.
Speaker 1: A lot of people really get their entire gameplay experience through these subscription services now rather than buying individual games. So I think the shows that Sony knows it has to move heavier into these subscription [00:04:00] model, which is important because you get that recurring revenue versus selling somebody, a piece of hardware, a console one time, then hoping they'll continue to buy games. It's the razor blade model, which goes back, you know, as long as there have been razors and blades, where the hardware, the base unit, you get at a, if not a discount, at least not a huge markup. And then they want buy the blames, the software, uh, you know, one piece at a time for games, 60 or $70. Well now if they can just get you in for 120 bucks a year for the highest [00:04:30] level tier of service and feed you a whole bunch of games, then you're recovering revenue customer year in and year out.
Speaker 1: And really at the end of the day, that's what everybody wants now is gonna be great for PlayStation gamers. It depends on what's in the catalog. Microsoft has done an excellent job putting really good games into the Xbox game, past catalog. Although there's a lot of junkers in there too, half the stuff feels like, you know, made for cable sci-fi channel movies, but they're also big hits Sony hopes. You're gonna come to see this as an essential element to add [00:05:00] to your game, especially if you're a PlayStation five owner. Assuming of course, that you've been lucky enough to be able to find and buy a PlayStation five.
