As we move firmly into the next generation of consoles, the ways in which users acquire and play games are also changing. PlayStation Plus, the subscription service that Sony officially announced late last month, now has a set of targeted release dates for Asia (excluding Japan), Japan, the Americas, and Europe. Here is the proposed rollout schedule, per PlayStation’s official blog:
- Asia markets (excluding Japan) — targeting May 23, 2022
- Japan — targeting June 1, 2022
- Americas — targeting June 13, 2022
- Europe — targeting June 22, 2022
It’s worth noting that these dates are “targeted,” and because of that, could be subject to change. But, that seems unlikely given the fact that this schedule gives exact dates rather than a designated month or season.
Some other updates that were included in the updated blog post include an expansion of Sony’s cloud streaming access to Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Republic of Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Users in these countries will be able to secure the premium tier of PlayStation Plus upon its launch. Additionally, PlayStation Now will be subsumed by the PlayStation Plus service.
A cost breakdown —
There are three tiers of membership for PlayStation Plus: Essentials, Extra, and Premium. The service isn’t exactly brand new either — it was first launched in 2010 when the PlayStation 3 reigned supreme — instead, it has received a makeover, presumably to compete with Xbox’s Game Pass service, which ultimately is ushering in the Netflix-ification of gaming.
The lowest tier will run users $60 per year and, aside from the standard offerings of the service since the launch of the PlayStation 4, provides users with access to online multiplayer as well as two monthly downloadable games. The middle tier costs $100 per year and ups the ante significantly, offering a collection of around 400 PS4 and PS5 games, which can be downloaded. The top tier comes in at a hefty $120 per year and runs the gamut of Sony history by providing access to over 300 PlayStation games from the PS1, PS2, PSP, and PS3 days. This, of course, is all in addition to the benefits from the lower tiers.
As Input previously pointed out though, the major drawback to the PlayStation Plus restructuring is that it doesn’t give users the ability to play all of the first-party Sony games like God of War: Ragnarok. Xbox’s Game Pass on the other hand does make its own first-party titles available to subscribers the moment they hit the service — for no additional costs.
