PlayStation Plus Has Reached Over 48 Million Subscribers, Breaks All-Time Record

thegamer.com:

PlayStation has announced that its PlayStation Plus subscription service has reached a whopping 48 million subscribers, the most subscribers the service has ever had in its entire history. While not a huge increase on last year, PlayStation Plus has broken its previous record of 47.6 million subscribers that it set in 2020.

With these numbers, PlayStation has set itself up quite nicely for its enhanced subscription service codenamed "Spartacus" to get off to a flying start. It was reported by Bloomberg that Sony has a Game Pass rival in the works and plans to replace PlayStation Now, turning PlayStation Plus into a much more robust service by offering players a selection of titles to play for a monthly fee alongside online multiplayer.

Related: PlayStation's Game Pass Rival Could Change Everything

Certain evidence also suggests that this new service could launch a lot sooner than most of us would expect. Eagle-eyed subscribers recently noticed that Sony seems to have dropped the PlayStation Plus branding entirely from its announcement of February's free games. Sony also recently pulled PlayStation Now gift cards from retailers in the UK.

Whatever the case may be, if PlayStation was to convert all 48 million of these existing PlayStation plus subscriptions into subscriptions for its rumored new service, Xbox Game Pass's 25 million subscribers would pale in comparison. The service would undoubtedly draw in more subscribers as well, giving Xbox a much more serious rival to contend with.

However, there's still a pretty massive advantage that Xbox has over PlayStation with Game Pass. One of the main reasons for Game Pass's popularity is Microsoft's willingness to include first-party releases on the service day one, something