I’ve had PS Plus for eight years and it could be so much better

techradar.com:

PS Plus used to be an essential part of owning a PlayStation. I needed it to play online multiplayer games with friends, I made sure to claim the free games each month, and picked up loads of bonus content and discounts. PlayStation Plus was an integral part of the PlayStation ecosystem for me.

But, recently, I’ve been finding less and less value in what was once an indispensable subscription service. The free games I once waited patiently to redeem each month are often disappointing and the bonus content is largely unused, there are some months I flat out forget to claim the freebies on offer. The online multiplayer remains the only real draw.

While this disenchantment could be down to a slump in the free games on offer — they’re the primary draw for me — the truth is it’s hard to ignore Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft’s subscription service appears to pack in much more than PS Plus for roughly the same price.

I’ve had PS Plus for about eight years now, having picked up my first subscription when I got a PS4. Back then, the service was vital, particularly as a student when I was eating noodles and vending machine snacks to get by. I couldn’t afford new games, so Sony’s monthly PS Plus offering allowed me to play something and to expand my horizons beyond the open-world RPGs I mostly sought out.

Fast forward to today and I’m fortunate enough to have a PlayStation 5, but the service that once felt like a necessity has grown stale. I redeem the PS Plus games (when I remember) simply because they’re there — but never play them — and otherwise use my subscription to play online games occasionally with friends. Though, at times, I can go weeks without using that either given the single-player nature of many of Sony’s first-party