On PlayStation Plus, Sony remains committed to holding back its first-party games from day one launches, a la Xbox Game Pass.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, PlayStation subscription boss Nick Maguire says “we’re pleased” with the strategy the company has adopted. “We’ve been able to reach more customers by putting games in later in the life cycle, since we’ve been able to reach them 12, 18, 24 months after they’ve released. Customers are still getting excited about those games and jumping in. That’s working for us. Sometimes, there will be an opportunity to invest in a day-and-date like Stray, and we’ll take advantage of those when they come in. However, letting those [first-party] games go out to the platform outside the service first has been working for us and will continue to be our strategy going forward.”
That’s pretty much the same line Sony has been putting forth since PS Plus relaunched last year. When Jim Ryan said “that virtuous cycle” would be broken by putting first-party games on subscription days and dates, he was correct. It seems that the time has not yet come to change Ryan’s strategy, although he left the door open to it changing in the future.
There are some first-party games in PS Plus, but they’re not the day one releases. In addition, McGuire points out that one such release is the service’s biggest success story: “Stray has attracted the highest number of players to that game over the first 12 months.” Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, a first-party addition released after launch, won the subscriber’s prize for “the highest number of gameplay hours.”
As an add-on to this, Maguire also revealed that PS Plus subscribers will soon be able to stream PS5 games for their consoles, which is at least one option that can compete with Game Pass in its own right.