Last night PlayStation revealed its new three-tiered PlayStation Plus subscription service that will offer players a huge library of PS5 and PS4 games, as well as access to PS1, PS2 and PSP classics, and PS3 games if you’re lucky enough to live in a region where PlayStation cloud streaming is available.
After dropping the news, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s top dog Jim Ryan revealed in an interview with gamesindustry.biz that PlayStation’s first-party titles won’t launch on the new service on day one, believing that doing so would impact the quality of games being developed.
“We feel like we are in a good virtuous cycle with the studios, where the investment delivers success, which enables yet more investment, which delivers yet more success. We like that cycle and we think our gamers like that cycle. Putting our own games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release… as you well know, this is not a road that we’ve gone down in the past. And it’s not a road that we’re going to go down with this new service. We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want.”
This means that you’ll still have to purchase games like God of War Ragnarök and Wolverine if you want to play them on release day. However, Ryan does admit that in time this could change.
“Who would have said even four years ago that you would see AAA PlayStation IP being published on PC? We started that last year with Horizon Zero Dawn, then Days Gone, and now God of War — a hugely polished and accomplished PC version of that game. [We’ve had] great critical success and great commercial success, and everybody has made their peace with that happening and is completely at ease with it. I don’t want to cast anything in stone at this stage. All I’m talking to today is the approach we’re taking in the short term. The way our publishing model works right now, it doesn’t make any sense. But things can change very quickly in this industry, as we all know.”
It’s not surprising to see PlayStation take this approach, and while I can only speak for myself, given the quality of games that come from PlayStation Studios I am happy to pay money for them.
What do you make of PlayStation’s new PS Plus not including first-party titles day one? Let us know in the comment or on social media.
Despite a childhood playing survival horrors, point and clicks and beat ’em ups, these days Zach tries to convince people that Homefront: The Revolution is a good game while pining for a sequel to The Order: 1886 and a live-action Treasure Planet film. Carlton, Burnley FC & SJ Sharks fan. Get around him on Twitter @tightinthejorts
