The New PS+ Thread

[TonyDA]

Microsoft are miles ahead of Sony in the way they are treating customers (for now). That being said, Sony still offers some of / the best first party games (with MS a distant 3rd in my opinion), so, as you say, trading in out of anger is probably not the way to go.

Best solution - buy one of everything. Even an Amico.

Oh don’t, a Series X has been in and out of my shopping basket a few times in the past few months!

It’s only the Sony First Party games (plus a decent backlog) that’s stopping me selling up. I’d love both consoles, but can’t justify the cost verses time available to play ratio.

I also think the old game pass upgrade for £1 has gone, which is probably a good thing in terms of my wallet!

[Damian]

Are there really that many people who want to play FIFA 22 who haven't bought it by now?

I guess that mileage may vary, but I hardly ever download the PS Plus games, let alone play them. I literally only continue to pay so that I can play F76. Which, to be fair, still makes it worthwhile for me .

I always downloaded them on PS4 to give them a bit of a try, when I have 2TB of extra memory relatively inexpensively (on an external drive). But that's not cheap for the PS5, so downloading new games means swapping existing ones out. As a result, I'm the same as you at the minute.

[Saint of Killers]

I also think the old game pass upgrade for £1 has gone, which is probably a good thing in terms of my wallet!

Not sure if that is true. But even if it was, upgrading via a 1 month sub is still far above and beyond anything Sony is offering. (Many times more so if you can also find a cheap Gold deal via VPN, etc.)

[jiggles]

I also think the old game pass upgrade for £1 has gone, which is probably a good thing in terms of my wallet!

Not sure if that is true. But even if it was, upgrading via a 1 month sub is still far above and beyond anything Sony is offering. (Many times more so if you can also find a cheap Gold deal via VPN, etc.)

Well, that’s just it isn’t it? They’re doing this specifically to block someone converting years of Plus to years of Plus Premium for the cost of a single month of PS Now. They disabled stacking just as they announced that’s how it would work. Previously they had just said Now would convert to Premium (not the longer of the two if you had both), but they removed prepaid Now cards from sale long before they revealed the new service, then the second they announced it they pulled 12 and 3 month now subs from the store (though there was still a loophole to stack more years of Now from PS5’s account settings for about 24 hours).

It’s one of those things where they know as the buyer you don’t really have a leg to stand on to complain. No matter when you add the extra months to your account you get exactly what you paid for. The only thing they’re preventing is people knowingly using it to get more than that for half price. Like they’re sitting there with a smirk on their face going “interesting that you’re so eager to stack time on to your plus account now and not last week, why is that?”.

Of course, all Microsoft’s loopholes to get GPU for cheap are great for the savvy consumer, and make this look like a real miserly move, but I think the expectation is maybe flipped a little. I feel like it’s a lot more surprising that Microsoft knowingly leave those loopholes in place than it is to see Plus stacking temporarily disabled.

I’m dying to know what’s going to happen if you start with Plus Premium and stack regular Plus time on to it though. The fact that they just convert the longer of the two to the top tier implies they don’t have the ability to manage two different end dates for different tiers of the new service. So if that’s the case you’d imagine you’d just be adding more Premium time. But if *that* was the case you’d be able to get it half price forever, just as long as you remember to buy a new entry tier card before your sub expires, so no chance. It’s likely that you won’t be able to add lower tier time to an existing sub until the sub is up. But that will mean you can’t actually use your code until then. And you might have some years already stacked so you can’t use it for ages. But these codes expire after a certain length of time.

[Saint of Killers]

The vast majority of those buying the sub wouldn't know about the loophole; Sony would still make bank from them. And if Sony had their gooseberry fool together they could have put a limit on the stack. But no. They just straight up pull any and all ways for their customers to come out even *slightly* ahead on this. They're responding to GamePass but not responding to MS's customer friendly vibe.

[Saint of Killers]

Was it during lockdown they straight up gave games away on multiple occasions? Wouldn't it be nice if during another difficult period for their customers (prices on everything increasing) they gave away something again? Be it a free promo trial period to the new sub, or starting everyone out on the highest tier for a period of time. Something. (There's still time for that to happen, ofc.)

[jiggles]

The vast majority of those buying the sub wouldn't know about the loophole; Sony would still make bank from them. And if Sony had their gooseberry fool together they could have put a limit on the stack. But no. They just straight up pull any and all ways for their customers to come out even *slightly* ahead on this. They're responding to GamePass but not responding to MS's customer friendly vibe.

But if you were one of those individuals simply looking to add more Plus time today because you got it on a deal, how disgruntled does this move make you? How important is it to you that the expiry date on the service gets pushed back a year today? How does that affect what you get vs what you wanted when you bought it?

Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like I’m defending the strategy, because absolutely, it would have been a win for us if they didn’t do this, and even for them a perception shift with some unexpected goodwill is probably worth more than the extra fees in the long term. After all, not everyone who gets Premium for half price is a lost full price customer. But the ire at this “scummy” move I’m seeing online just feels a bit weird, when it’s more like this is the “normal” move but what they’re doing over at Xbox is generous.

[jiggles]

Anyway, anyone giving off is a strawberry floating Tory for thinking the people with the disposable income to buy years in advance should have the right to only pay half of what those too poor to stack subs do.

[Sprouty]

Based on the recent clarification, I could buy 5 years of PS Plus, 3 months of PS Now and I'd be upgraded to PS Plus Premium at no extra cost for the remainder of the 5 years. I can see why they blocked it.

Still waiting for clarification on the PS5 games. At this rate, we'll find out when the service launches in the first region...

[Saint of Killers]

That's absolutely spot on; the way MS are doing it *no one* else does anything remotely like it. It's like loss leading almost on a whole other level. What Sony are doing is par for the course. Not scummy. Just a corporation acting disappointingly like a corporation even though their primary competition is showing them it can be done differently.

[jiggles]

Based on the recent clarification, I could buy 5 years of PS Plus, 3 months of PS Now and I'd be upgraded to PS Plus Premium at no extra cost for the remainder of the 5 years. I can see why they blocked it.

Still waiting for clarification on the PS5 games. At this rate, we'll find out when the service launches in the first region...

Returnal, Death Stranding, the two Spiders-Man and MK11 have been announced, not sure if they’re all day 1, but Returnal should be. I’d expect Sackboy to be there. And Ghost of Tsushima after launch. They’ll probably just throw all the previous monthly games in there too.

[jawa_]

Right now in videogaming, Microsoft often looks good but I'm not getting too carried away as they're a global behemoth with massively deep pockets that enable Game Pass, whilst Sony is currently often focused on shooting itself in the foot and Nintendo forges forward on it's random path system.

[jawa_]

PushSquare have published what they believe to be the conversion calculations for PS Plus stacking/pre-paid cards. It's pretty convoluted but, as a rule of thumb, there doesn't appear to be Game Pass-style "I paid £1 for Ultimate" loopholes.

[jiggles]

I’m dying to know what’s going to happen if you start with Plus Premium and stack regular Plus time on to it though. The fact that they just convert the longer of the two to the top tier implies they don’t have the ability to manage two different end dates for different tiers of the new service. So if that’s the case you’d imagine you’d just be adding more Premium time. But if *that* was the case you’d be able to get it half price forever, just as long as you remember to buy a new entry tier card before your sub expires, so no chance. It’s likely that you won’t be able to add lower tier time to an existing sub until the sub is up. But that will mean you can’t actually use your code until then. And you might have some years already stacked so you can’t use it for ages. But these codes expire after a certain length of time.

Actually, they have a chart for that.

twitter.com/Wario64/status/1520046208626044930

I don’t know if it’s removed now because they never fixed the link or if it’s because, as some posters on Resetera have pointed out, changing the terms of a gift card like this after purchase is illegal in some states.

Jesus, what a mess.

[Sprouty]

Based on the recent clarification, I could buy 5 years of PS Plus, 3 months of PS Now and I'd be upgraded to PS Plus Premium at no extra cost for the remainder of the 5 years. I can see why they blocked it.

Still waiting for clarification on the PS5 games. At this rate, we'll find out when the service launches in the first region...

Returnal, Death Stranding, the two Spiders-Man and MK11 have been announced, not sure if they’re all day 1, but Returnal should be. I’d expect Sackboy to be there. And Ghost of Tsushima after launch. They’ll probably just throw all the previous monthly games in there too.

No confirmation on whether we're getting the PS4 or PS5 versions of the multi gen games though, which worries me a little. But I've wanted to play four of those for a while, so for me the value is there and it would take a balls up to stop me upgrading. I'd really like more native PS5 games for my console though, so fingers crossed.

For Microsoft, Gamepass is a tool to increase userbase. If that loses them revenue (in lost game sales), it's no issue. For Sony, PS Plus Tiers are a way to stay competitive and they'll want it to ultimately be more profitable than their current strategy. It's like comparing Netflix and Disney Plus. If time or money is sparce, either offers great value and both have exclusive content. Those with money and time to spare will gain from having both.

I'm going to need to expand my storage to get the most of the new service though.

[jiggles]

Oh, I meant the PS5 versions of those games specifically.

Edit: actually, hmm, they didn’t actually say that. I got a list from some other site that inferred it. I can only imagine that cross gen titles you get both. You only get the PS4 versions currently with Now but they don’t offer any PS5 games at all with the service, which is the main change to that offering.

[Sprouty]

Oh, I meant the PS5 versions of those games specifically.

Edit: actually, hmm, they didn’t actually say that. I got a list from some other site that inferred it. I can only imagine that cross gen titles you get both. You only get the PS4 versions currently with Now but they don’t offer any PS5 games at all with the service, which is the main change to that offering.

The assumption is probably correct, but not guaranteed. I can only imagine the bad PR that would come from sneaking the PS4 versions of those games only onto the service though, especially as they are the only confirmed games at this point so most people are likely assuming the same thing.

[Saint of Killers]

twitter.com/gematsu/status/1521143593993490438

[Monkey Man]

twitter.com/playstation/status/1526170955604803587

[BOR]

twitter.com/Ubisoft/status/1526178390503567363