Sony still won't put new first-party games on PlayStation Plus day one, says exec
"We're happy with our strategy."
Sony is confident in its current PlayStation Plus strategy, and has no plans to change it right now.
Speaking with Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz, PlayStation's head of subscriptions Nick Maguire said putting games on to the service "a bit later in the life cycle" is working for Sony. Therefore, this will "continue to be [its] strategy moving forward."
"We're happy with our strategy," Maguire told the publication. "Putting games in a bit later in the life cycle has meant that we can reach more customers 12, 18, 24 months after they have released."
Maguire commented the company has seen its customers get excited about these games' arrival on the subscription service, even though they are not day one releases.
"For us, that's working," the Sony exec explained. "Occasionally, there will be an opportunity to invest in a day-and-date like Stray and we will jump on those when they come in. But for us, letting those [first-party] games go out to the platform outside the service first... that's working and that will continue to be our strategy moving forward."
This is, of course, a very different approach to Microsoft, which regularly releases new titles on its Game Pass subscription service on the day of their release. This is true for smaller indie games, such as Sea of Stars, or the company's AAA big hitters like Starfield. It is a large part of Game Pass' appeal.
Meanwhile, when asked about Sony's approach to service-based games, Maguire stated the PS Plus team is "constantly working out what the right strategy is" while "keeping close to it and thinking about the role that Plus can play moving forward".
The exec shared the same response when asked about potentially including a PC offering into its current PS Plus deal, which is again something that Microsoft already does.
Elsewhere in the interview, Maguire shared some interesting PS Plus stats.
According to the exec, PS Plus has seen "a billion hours of gameplay since that catalogue launched" last year, with users spending on average seven times as much time on Sony's revamped subscription service than they did with PS Now in the year prior to its launch.
"And that's from a wider, bigger base of players," he shared, attributing this success to the "quality of diversity" included in the service's portfolio.
"It makes Plus attractive to many people and we've continued to find high quality, high calibre titles. That means that there's something there for nearly everyone."
As for those titles, Maguire revealed that indie cat game Stray has had the most players of any PS Plus game, while Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima has the highest number of gameplay hours.
"Four of the top ten over the year have been PS Studios titles, whether that's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Horizon Forbidden West and even Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, which only joined recently - that's climbing very quickly and growing month-on-month. These exclusive titles are really what's resonating. It's bringing people in," he shared.
For more on PS Plus, Sony recently revealed its games for June. Additionally, it has shared its plans to add cloud streaming capability to its PlayStation 5 titles. This, the company has said, will make it easier for us all to "jump into [our] favourite games" without having to download them.
"Our goal is to add this as an additional benefit to PlayStation Plus Premium as part of our ongoing efforts to enhance the value of PlayStation Plus," Sony said, with testing now in the "early stages".