Stray Has To Be The Start Of Big Day-One Hitters For PlayStation Plus Premium

thegamer.com:

PlayStation Plus Premium probably isn’t the Xbox Game Pass rival Sony was hoping for it to be. It’s a perfectly passable service, packing a number of modern games and beloved classics under its umbrella for a reasonable monthly asking price, but it just doesn’t command the same cultural presence as its Xbox rival.

Nobody is talking about it, and even the console giant behind it hasn’t bothered to properly promote it or show existing subscribers why it’s worth upgrading in the first place. I don’t have my gamer pals rocking up to our usual spot and asking me if the latest indie darling is launching on PlayStation Plus Premium, some of them haven’t even heard of the damn thing. Sony hasn’t done enough to cultivate that reputation, and thus it’s been left behind.

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Sony made it clear that first-party exclusives like Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok would never launch through PlayStation Plus Premium. These prestigious games are considered too valuable, occupying a certain prestige that justifies a lofty price tag before being thrown into an on-demand library that any old schmuck has access to.

This approach is fine. PlayStation has risen and remains on top because it set a new benchmark for exclusives that place a focus on characters, narrative, and massive worlds to explore and nobody in the medium has quite managed to match. Even as Microsoft snaps up countless studios to work on exclusives it still hasn’t managed to catch up, and given the mountain of IP Sony has access to that we’ve fallen in love with, I imagine it will continue ruling the roost for quite some time. So it’s keeping its most valuable cards close to its chest.

Demon’s