Sony is all-in on PlayStation Plus, says its most expensive tier is thriving
Sony kicks off PS Plus' 15th anniversary by chatting with Game File about the past, present and future of its gaming subscription service: Talking price, catalogue tweaks and where the PS3 games are.
PlayStation Plus is growing faster on PS5 than it did on PS4. And more users are signing up for Plus’ highest-tier $160/year Premium than the middle $135/year Extra option.
That’s according to Nick Maguire, vice president of global services at PlayStation, who recently spoke to Game File on the occasion of the pending 15-year anniversary of the launch of the PS Plus service (that’s the crystal or rubies anniversary, per The Knot).
As Sony aims for increased profitability in its gaming division, the company is bullish on Plus. The three-tiered subscription deal offers players access to online gaming, piles of free games, some discounts, and PlayStation brass hopes, long-term fan loyalty.
“Engagement in Plus has never been higher than it is right now,” Maguire told Game File.
Launched on June 29, 2010, for $50/year, PlayStation Plus originally provided access to a monthly offering of recent game releases, initially for the PS3, PSP and PS One (along with access to the PlayStation lifestyle show Qore …anyone remember that?).
In the years that followed, the monthly game offerings became the focus, with PS4 games added to the mix as that system rolled out. Later, PS5 titles began trickling in as well, as each monthly update expanded a subscriber’s collection, as long as they kept their subscription going.
“We've given something like 500 games through monthly games over the years,” Maguire said. He estimated 15% of subscribers have “hundreds” of those games in their own libraries.
An overhaul in 2022 revised Plus and expanded the program into a three-tier offering:
A $60/year Essential tier that included access to online multiplayer and new monthly games
A $100/year Extra tier that includes the above, plus a growing catalogue of PS4 and PS5 games
A $120/year Premium tier, including the above, plus an expanding classic games catalogue containing a mix of PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP titles
That rework “surpassed our expectations,” Maguire said. “It's really given us a new way to reach the audiences with these games, and it's given new value to partners to find new people to play their titles. And just the engagement we see from it is really positive, in terms of the number of people choosing that Catalog and coming back month after month.”
As games (and more features) have been added, prices have gone up.
In 2023, Sony raised the prices of the three Plus tiers, including in the U.S., where they increased to $80 (Essential), $135 (Extra) and $160 (Premium) per year, respectively.
This spring, Sony raised the price of Plus in some regions, including Asia and Australia.
Two weeks ago Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino said in a pre-recorded chat for investors that the Plus price increases had been “partly a result of increasing value we bring to the players” and had not slowed subscriber uptake of the platform. In comments that got a lot of play in the press as a potential hint of another price hike, he added, “[W]e will continue to add more value and adjust our pricing strategy in a dynamic way to maximize profitability.”
Maguire said he had “no comments, no plans on pricing to talk about directly,” when I asked about the speculation stemming from Nishino’s remarks. “I think we just want to invest in Plus,” he said. “We want to invest in the proposition, bring more value to users. And we're seeing high growth in Extra, Premium.”
Premium has grown 18% in the last 12 months, Maguire said, noting Sony is able to “reinvest” in the service by adding features such as game-streaming on PS Portal and support for Sony Pictures Core. He added that “the quality of games, hopefully people will appreciate, is probably improving year over year.”
Sony does not say how many people subscribe to PS Plus, preferring to focus on the mix of paid tiers and expressing happiness about how things are going.
“We've gone past two billion hours of game playing in the last year across our first and third party games,” Maguire said.
Plus subscribers are solidly transitioned into the current console generation. Some 81% of PS Plus subscribers own a PS5, up from 70% a year ago, a Sony rep told Game File.
Microsoft also doesn’t talk user counts for its competing Game Pass service. But its subscription plans tend to get more press thanks to Xbox’s splashy commitment to include new first-party releases day-and-date for subscribers.
Sony maintains that offering its next blockbusters immediately to Plus subscribers isn’t a line it plans to cross.
“We've sort of stayed true to our strategy across the board, where we're not looking to put games in day and date,” Maguire said.
Sony has released some third-party games into Plus on their launch days, including puzzle game Blue Prince in April and Remedy’s multiplayer game FBC Firebreak this month. Sony’s own games are added to Plus much later.
“Our strategy of finding four or five independent day-and-date titles—and using that to complement our strategy of bringing games in when they're 12, 18 months old or older—that balance for us is working really well across the platform,” Maguire said.
That tally of four-to-five day one third-party games per year for Plus isn’t set in stone.
“If there were six or seven great opportunities, then we would go for them as well,” Maguire said.
(While Sony has been steadfast about not adding its first-party games into Plus at launch, I have wondered whether doing so would help with the company’s unsteady efforts into live service games. Such games only thrive when a lot of people are playing, and inclusion in the PS Plus library would seemingly help swiftly give them a large audience. Last year, Sony-backed Helldivers 2 didn’t need the help. It was a quick hit. But Sony-made Concord flamed out in less than two weeks and might have benefited. Maguire declined to share thoughts about how Plus could have impacted those games but said, “I think Plus has proven itself to be a great way to introduce new players to franchises. So I think there's always going to be a moment for any game where there's the right time for it to go into Plus, when it's ready to reach a wider audience or…to find new fans or new parts of our platform that it hasn't already reached.”)
Deciding which games to add (or remove)
Sony currently adds, on average, a couple of PS5 games and a couple of PS4 games to the Essential tier of Plus each month. (June 2025’s additions included last September’s NBA 2K25 and 2023’s Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.)
Part of the consideration, Maguire said, is “how do we create a moment to grow a franchise, maybe before a sequel is coming out?”
For the deeper PS4/PS5 game catalogue accessed by Extra and Premium subscribers, Maguire said the goal is to add at least two to three games a month, with newer games offered to both tiers. (June 2025’s Extra-level games included the brand-new FBC Firebreak, 2021’s Battlefield 2042 and 2023’s We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie).
“They'll drop on a different day of the month to Essential and we just try to keep it fresh and bring something different each month, so there's something for players to come back to.”
Sony also offers new “classic” games to its Premium tier of PS Plus. These can be from the PS1, PS2, PS3 and even the PSP. (In June, Sony added an emulated version of PS2 classic Deus Ex: The Conspiracy).
“We're trying to bring in one a month minimum,” Maguire said of the older Premium classics. “Obviously there's a great emulation team in the background who are working on those with partners and internal teams, so there is a slightly longer lead time sometimes.”
Classics released via PS Plus Premium this year included Armored Core (PS1), War of the Monsters (PS2) and Patapon 3 (PSP), though no games from the PS3. The PS3 is the one Sony home console whose games can’t run on the hardware. They have to be played over a streaming connection.
Adding PS3 games is tougher, Maguire said, but the 2025 drought doesn’t indicate an end of support. “Through streaming, we'll still continue to look at those ones.” He added: “We haven't ruled them out. The opportunities are there. But there are a lot of PS3 games already streaming.”
Some games, on the other hand, leave the service. That has included some first-party Sony titles, such as two PS3 Resistance games from Insomniac and Sucker Punch’s PS4 debut Infamous Second Son, all of which were removed from the Extra and Premium game catalogues in May.
Maguire said such delistings are about balance. “We've got 80 collections of games across the catalog,” he said. “So we want to keep it fresh and bring in new games. Sometimes that means taking a few games out at the same time to keep the proposition interesting and help people find new games as well.”
Sony is planning to celebrate Plus’ 15th anniversary here at the end of June, with discounts as well as game tournaments involving EA Sports FC, NBA 2K, UFC, Madden and Tekken 8. It’s a “chance for people to compete together, win prizes and just celebrate and play together,” Maguire said.
Some data from Sony….
Top 10 most-played PS Plus games this spring (April 1 - May 28, 2025) based on playtime hours, in alphabetical order:
Dead by Daylight
Ghost of Tsushima
God of War Ragnarök
Grand Theft Auto V
Hogwarts Legacy
The Last of Us Part I
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
UFC 5
Daring to read the comments
Sony announces additions to PS Plus’ Essentials and Extra/Premium libraries every month on the PlayStation blog. Below those posts, Sony’s commenters tend to offer a mixed reaction to the Essentials updates and more withering negativity around the Extra/Premium additions.
Maguire admits that he reads the comments. “It can be helpful to understand where people are at and, if we can, take that into our learnings in the future,,” he said.
He said some negativity is expected because the company is trying to offer a wide range of games. “Because our strategy is about having something for everyone, therefore, by definition, there's going to be some people that don't want that particular month,” he said.
The data, he said, shows many signs of satisfaction. Nearly 40% of Plus subscribers are signing up for the Premium and Extra tiers, he said, “mostly to play that catalogue, because it's where they see the value.”
“I think we'll continue to listen and learn about what gamers want and try to bring more value in for them,” he said. “We're very proud of what we've delivered in the last few year. And excited to sort of see the response and the engagement we get from players coming in.”
Maybe it's the collector in me, but big new releases at no cost to members brings down the value of the property. Or at least reduces desirability -- if it's free, how good can it be.
Sad to see the PlayStation Stars rewards program go away next month. It's been a ton of fun and a great motivator. I'll refrain from using withering negativity to express that disappointment in the comments.
Really interesting news. I'm very curious though if anyone is studying whether or not all of the streaming services+remasters+back catalogs = declining sales for new games & declining spend overall?