Sony Defends PlayStation Plus’ Price Increase, No Day One Game Releases
Sony has chimed in to defend their PlayStation Plus policies.
Last September, Sony hiked prices up for PlayStation Plus’ subscription plans. Now, you have to pay between $ 80 and $ 160 per month to maintain the privilege of playing online, playing demos, and accessing a rotating library of games without buying them at full price.
Higher tiers also give PlayStation Plus users access to the PlayStation Classics library, and cloud gaming. But Sony risks facing customer backlash with their policies, especially with current economic conditions.
As reported by GameRant, PlayStation senior vice president Eric Lempel talked to Barron’s about this issue. He didn’t defend these policies directly, but did point out that a lack of public complaints about this means that PlayStation Plus subscribers seem to be happy enough with the service. Lempel also revealed that one-third of all PlayStation Plus users are subscribed to one of the two higher tiers.
Just to put that into context, last July, we learned from regulatory documents that 70 to 80 % of Xbox Game Pass subscribers are on the higher tier. That is a clearer indication that Xbox’s subscription service is satisfying their customers than Sony is with their audience and subscription service.
Lempel also addressed a common complaint about PlayStation Plus, stemming from a major advantage that Game Pass has over it. Game Pass includes Day One releases of many video games, meaning they release on retail full price at the same day they appear on Game Pass.
While some analysts would have warned that this could harm retail sales, Microsoft’s experience is that it widens the pie for potential customers to play video games. Now what Microsoft experiences may not necessarily match up with
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