PlayStation Plus Premium is finally living up to its potential

digitaltrends.com:

It was inevitable that PlayStation Plus would be broken up into tiers at some point. For years, it was already split between the core PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now, but there was almost no focus put on the latter service until Xbox Game Pass started ramping up. Instead of just rebranding Now as a second tier to Plus, it was instead segmented into Extra and Premium above the Essential tier, which was largely unchanged from what Plus was prior to the change. Premium, being the most expensive option, and even getting the largest price hike with the price increases we saw last year, needed the quality and consistency to match the new asking price.

Up until very recently, I couldn’t say PlayStation Plus Premium was worth the cost. It just wasn’t delivering the kind of consistency it needed to sell it. Now, it looks like it may be living up to its potential as the best option for longtime PlayStation fans.

The promise of Premium

At a glance, Extra looks like the best value of PS Plus’ three tiers if you want more than the absolute basics of online play, cloud saves, and a few free games a month. Extra provides access to a huge library of PS4 and PS5 games from first- and third-parties, frequent new additions, and even the occasional day-one drop. Premium, on the other hand, initially offered nothing more than a drip feed of two or three PS1 and PSP games for years. That’s great if you happened to get a game you were fond of or curious about, but the inconsistent pace and quality of the games were hardly worth the yearly price when you could opt to just purchase any that caught your eye à la carte.

Where Premium was meant to justify its cost was in PS1 and PSP games, but also PS2 and PS3 games. The latter two saw essentially no additions (literally none in the case of PS3 games) since converting from PS Now. The aforementioned price increase last year certainly didn’t help people’s perception of Premium, but Sony itself holds the blame.

Instead of giving any update