New PS Plus heralds the battle of the streaming services | Opinion
Rob Fahey
Contributing Editor
Friday 17th June 2022
PlayStation
Sony
Next week, Sony's new-and-improved PlayStation Plus service will launch in the UK.
It's already available in several other regions, though, so we don't expect any major surprises at the UK launch.
The details of what's included at the various tier levels of the new service are pretty clear now; these tiers range from the Essential tier that replicates the price and functionality of the existing PS Plus, via the Extra tier which offers a large library of PS4 and PS5 games, up to the Premium tier which adds a grab bag of retro games and game streaming functionality.
At both the Extra and Premium tiers, this service is set up to compete more or less directly with Microsoft's Game Pass, albeit with the important caveat that Sony won't be putting its first-party titles on the subscription service at launch (at least not initially -- I remain convinced this policy will be walked back in the coming years).
Given the pricing and the huge size of the PS4/PS5 library being made available on the more high-end tiers, they're actually a pretty robust offering. This is, in essence, the Game Pass alternative that many people believed Sony would never offer; day-and-date launches for first party games aside, most consumers would probably find what Sony's offering in the new PS Plus very competitive with Microsoft's service.
There are a handful of areas where [Sony] lags behind, with perhaps the least tangible but most important of them being the clear branding and communication of Game Pass
Sony hasn't caught up with Microsoft entirely in this regard -- aside from the launch-day games issue, there are a handful of other areas where they lag behind Game Pass, with
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