Now, three years later, the vice president of global services at PlayStation (Nick Maguire) has revealed Sony's enthusiasm about the Xbox Game Pass style structure, stating that the overhaul to PlayStation Plus has "surpassed our expectations" and has led to engagement that has "never been higher than it is right now" for the service.
Here's a bit of what he had to say about this in an interview with Game File this week:
“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.”
Later in the interview, Maguire advised that Sony wants to keep investing in the service to "bring more value to users", pointing out that the two most expensive tiers (Extra and Premium) are experiencing "high growth" right now.
PlayStation Plus is undoubtedly here to stay as a competitor to Xbox Game Pass, then, although the one major difference is Sony's reluctance to put first-party titles into the program at launch. Maguire says the focus will remain on "bringing games in when they're 12, 18 months old or older" aside from certain "day-and-date" indie games, as it's a balance that's "working really well across the platform".
From our perspective here at Pure Xbox, we've certainly enjoyed engaging with PlayStation Plus ever since it rebranded a few years ago, and it's a lot better now than it was before. It probably wouldn't have happened without Xbox Game Pass though, which really sparked off a new model for how players engage with console games in the modern era. Nintendo hasn't really joined the party yet, of course, but who knows what the future might hold!
