I've not had playstation plus for close to 10 years at this point. Last night I looked at it again, and see it's totally changed.
When I had PS+ on PS3, it was $60 for a year, you got 3 games per month, and if you weren't subscribed when a game came out on PS+ then you missed out.
Last night I looked it up, and there's 3 different tiers, with the cheapest one being $80, still gives you 3 games like before, and you get to play online.
This month, they got a sports game (which lets face it will be dramatically cheaper to buy in 3 years), a game called little creatures 2, and some harry potter game. So to me it sounds like this month would be totally skippable.
But that's not the worst part. The worst part is just value per dollar.
I like old retro games, and the new way they set all this up, is that there is a list of always available games to download, which are retro. If you get this, you can play from about 200ish games. Many of which I saw and thought "I want to play that!"
But when you look at the cost, it goes from being must-have, to being a real thought provoker on if it's even worth it. It costs $155 per year.
I just looked at the list of 3 games per month that you get in the lowest tier, which costs $80 per year, dating all the way back to June 2022. I saw ONE game in that amount of time that I would have otherwise bought. ONE. In a little over 2 years. Which means one year I would have gotten ONE game that I'd play, and the other year I'd have gotten exactly ZERO games I'd play.
So you look back to that highest tier which allows you to play retro games. And granted, yes, there are quite a few I'd actually play, but here's the problem. I'm not going to play all of these at once. I don't have time to play 12 different games at the same time anymore. These games are clearly aimed at my generation, as they mostly came out in the 90s, and early to mid 2000s. As good of a game as Worms Armegeddon is, I don't see many teenagers today even trying it. Which is a real shame, because they're right at the age where saying "I got worms!" is still hilarious everytime you say it.
But they're not going to play it. I'M going to play it.
But you price the damn game in a tier that lets me play the game for 12 months. for $155.
Now, for a moment, let's ignore the fact that I could EASILY emulate this game right now, on any modern hardware with emulators, for free. Let's ignore that for a second, and try to do things the legal way. I just checked ebay, and if I never found my copy of Worms Armegeddon on PS1, I could buy it right now, complete in box with free shipping for $12.50. Plus tax I assume. That game will still work in my PS3. It might even work in my PS5. I've never tried a PS1 game in a PS5, but maybe it works? If not, I still have my PS3, which I KNOW works.
So for this $12.50, I own the game forever, and can still play it just fine in 13 months.
And I'm sure there's many other PS1 and PS2 games in that retro list which fit similar situations. Now, considering I'm NOT going to be playing this massive list of games they provide all at once, it would stand to reason that you should stay on this service so that when you're done with one, you can start the next. Great! One problem.
If PS1/PS2 games range from $5.00-$30.00 complete, how many of those games I was going to play can just be bought outright on ebay for $155?
At some point, I could just OWN the majority of those retro games, plus not be bound by an arbitrary list based on liscense agreements that may and do run out at any time.
So my point is, the value for these tiers starts to become less about the games themselves, and more about the ability to play online.....which can be done in the lowest tier.
I agree that Sony needs money to run these online servers, but I disagree that current costs make sense. I'd rather skip the extras, and just say "Alright, let me pay $10 a year, and I'll just get access to online play."
Because to me, online play, and nothing more, is NOT worth $80 a year, especially considering I might go online once a month? There were times where I didn't even turn on my PS4 for months/years at a time. Sony wants to make the concept of going online to be some big premium expense, and then wonders why over half their PS4 market never bought a PS5. It just stops being worth it at a certain age.