Stray on day one was an ‘anomaly’ for PS Plus says Sony

metro.co.uk:

Don’t expect even third party games to launch day one on PS Plus, as Sony refuses to take on Game Pass head-on.

Despite assumptions that it would essentially be a Sony alternative to Xbox Game Pass, the revamped PlayStation Plus service is anything but.

The major difference is that Sony won’t be adding its first party games to the service’s Extra or Premium tiers from day one, which is the exact opposite to Microsoft’s approach.

It did seem like third party titles would be treated differently, following Stray’s addition from launch, but it now sounds like this was more of an exception to the rule, as Sony says it is prioritising premium releases over subscriptions.

During an interview at GI Live: London, PlayStation Indies boss Shuhei Yoshida discussed Sony’s approach to its subscription service.

‘Stray was something different’, he said. ‘By including and featuring Stray as the face of this upper tier service, I hope we contributed to promoting the title when it came out. It’s early days, it’s kind of an anomaly to what I explained earlier… it’s kind of experimental.’

He further explained that the benefit for other publishers to add their games to PS Plus is an additional revenue stream following an initial release. Such a release would also extend its lifecycle and help promote a potential sequel or DLC.

‘For Extra, our approach [is] we like to help the publishers [with] lifecycle management. I was managing first-party [at PlayStation] so I know that it’s like in the movies – a movie comes out at the theatre first, then goes to pay per view, or a subscription service, or free TV, every time generating new revenue and reaching out to a broader audience,’ he told GamesIndustry.biz.

‘In the same kind of way, we believe in the