How Sony's New PlayStation Plus Pits Against Xbox Game Pass and Other Game Subscription Services
Sony is launching its new PlayStation Plus in India next week. The update brings the service in four tiers, namely Essential, Extra, Deluxe, and Premium. While the Essential is the base version, Deluxe and Premium are the top tiers — depending on which market you are in. The new PlayStation Plus is aimed to help Sony increase its revenues. It is also to better compete against Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass — a similar multi-tier service specifically designed for gamers on Xbox.
On this week's episode of Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital, host Akhil Arora speaks with industry insider Rishi Alwani and video game enthusiast Pranay Parab — both former Gadgets 360 teammates — to talk about the new PlayStation Plus and the growing market of game subscription services that already has Xbox Game Pass as a leading name.
We start the conversation to discuss the benefits gamers will get with the new PlayStation Plus service. Sony is introducing it in India on June 22.
However, instead of considering India as a part of the Asian rollout, the Japanese company has taken the country in Europe to schedule the release of the new service.
"From a consumer behaviour perspective, or the buying habits and playing habits, India is more in line with the Western market," Rishi says. "It's also because the arm of Sony that actually took an inkling to India and the Middle East was Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe, which was basically also known as Ski London essentially."
He also adds that the other reason why Sony considered India as a part of Europe is the fact that the country is a "PAL territory" — meaning it is based on the PAL colour encoding system.
The new PlayStation Plus has three different tiers to pick from in a particular market. The
Read more on gadgets.ndtv.com
