Sony is losing the online subscription battle - how many paying customers is this costing them?
I put up a video on the PS3 game Alien Rage:
and made some throwaway comment about a search for what Sony thinks of PS+
What was about to follow was a lambasting of the PS+ service for PS3 owners - largely written in fact - but I started actually looking into it.
Whilst Live Gold offers more value to me, I do owe both an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One, the later which I use for online gaming. So a lot of that I need to actually forget as without a PS4 I'm already missing out on a good chunk of available features.
PS+ is 3 years or so older than the Games with Gold program and they were originally different beasts - PS+ was a follow-up to Sony's apology for the hacking issues when they offered Burnout: Paradise and a choice of 1 from 5 other games as an offering for the lack of service and lack of support at that point. It worked very well and Sony decided to offer a few games per month for an annual subscription. Multiplayer was still available for free on PS3.
Meanwhile Live Gold was a similarly priced subscription on Xbox 360 that provided access for multiplayer - and no free games.
With the launch of the Xbox One, and after trialing the concept with things like the Summer of Games, Microsoft threw their hat into the free game providing whilst Sony joined the multiplayer access route for PS4, making both services now very similar.
I do wonder if in 3 years I may be looking at what Microsoft is offering and wondering where it went wrong but really at the moment, Sony have gone firmly down the route of indie games whilst Microsoft are going through the AAA game pile.
Yes some of this is due to the time but I think quite a large portion is due to Microsofts Backwards Compatibility - they have identified that gamers want access to the games they liked on prior consoles, on their current consoles and if they don't need to rebuy the game again, that's a bonus.
Also, I believe that the Xbox 360 games, at least, are available should you cease to play for Live Gold - which has never been a feature of PS+
And backwards compatibility is important to me.
I've said this before in other articles but it's been a key reason for actually purchasing consoles in the past.
PS2 - an equal split between the next Resident Evil title being available, the built in DVD player and being able still to play the older Resident Evil games (plus Metal Gear Solid, Dino Crisis, Crash Team Racing, Parasite Eve 2, NHL2000 ...)
PS3 - the only reason we bought this was for backwards compatibility (in the original model at least). We predicted that game series would move over (true for Res Evil and Metal Gear Solid, still waiting on the others ...)
And because this wasn't just a Sony thing - a large bonus to getting a Wii was that the Gamecube games we owned could still be played (again Res Evil - my wife has a thing for that series).
PS4 doesn't have backwards compatibility (other than by whatever makes the PS Now cut - yet ANOTHER subscription service) so with the PS3 soon to be discontinued, I'm beginning to face the very real concern that a large portion of the games that I play will soon be no longer available. And yet most of the games I play on PS3 still are disc based offline (largely Lego games to be honest with the two monsters).
Would my PS+ subscription be better moved over to a subscription of Minecraft Realms so that we could all play online on a selection of devices? If Microsoft had actually got around to getting the Xbox One version of Minecraft work with Android (which i think was promised for last summer ...) there's a very good chance I would have gone this route, especially as I could have potentially shared the cost with a friend so that his little monster could also join in.
As much as I still like the PS4, and there are several games on that system, I would love to play, the quality of service that I'm receiving from Sony is beginning to put me off. I left Orange (now EE) years ago for the same reason - being overcharged for steadily declining service. And I switch utility suppliers yearly to avoid that.
Several of the games that I 'maintain' on the PS3 (such as Badlands, Borderlands 2 and Xcom) are now available to me on my Xbox - in fact I think it may only be Littlebigplanet 2 that I still routinely play on the PS3 that requires the PS+ subscription
I'm sure Sony isn't really going to care about the opinion of one blogger - but there seem to be a lot of outlets that would suggest Live Gold is currently a better option than PS+ - almost certainly with regard to the games available
How many bloggers would it take for Sony to pay attention?
I'm sure in their minds they are expecting everyone to upgrade to PS4, or PS4 Pro, or Neo. But if the service isn't there - why would I? It took me 8 months to save up for a Xbox One - and I haven't started any console slush fund yet. At this point, I'm leaning more and more towards starting my fund for a Scorpio with the PS+ subscription and just accepting that a) I lose a good chunk of my games library (which has happened before) and b) that I just don't play that games library any more
Maybe I'm being unreasonable - PS3 has been going since 2006 - but at this point I've spent a few hundred pounds on a large library of games that I either don't have the consoles to play, or the time to play. And most of which I wouldn't have chosen to play. There have been some gems in that (so glad when Journey finally made it) but if I was given the option to stop paying and just keep the the games that I already have ... well the Youtube channel may well end up even more Xbox focused than it already is ...
and made some throwaway comment about a search for what Sony thinks of PS+
What was about to follow was a lambasting of the PS+ service for PS3 owners - largely written in fact - but I started actually looking into it.
Whilst Live Gold offers more value to me, I do owe both an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One, the later which I use for online gaming. So a lot of that I need to actually forget as without a PS4 I'm already missing out on a good chunk of available features.
PS+ is 3 years or so older than the Games with Gold program and they were originally different beasts - PS+ was a follow-up to Sony's apology for the hacking issues when they offered Burnout: Paradise and a choice of 1 from 5 other games as an offering for the lack of service and lack of support at that point. It worked very well and Sony decided to offer a few games per month for an annual subscription. Multiplayer was still available for free on PS3.
Meanwhile Live Gold was a similarly priced subscription on Xbox 360 that provided access for multiplayer - and no free games.
With the launch of the Xbox One, and after trialing the concept with things like the Summer of Games, Microsoft threw their hat into the free game providing whilst Sony joined the multiplayer access route for PS4, making both services now very similar.
I do wonder if in 3 years I may be looking at what Microsoft is offering and wondering where it went wrong but really at the moment, Sony have gone firmly down the route of indie games whilst Microsoft are going through the AAA game pile.
Yes some of this is due to the time but I think quite a large portion is due to Microsofts Backwards Compatibility - they have identified that gamers want access to the games they liked on prior consoles, on their current consoles and if they don't need to rebuy the game again, that's a bonus.
Also, I believe that the Xbox 360 games, at least, are available should you cease to play for Live Gold - which has never been a feature of PS+
And backwards compatibility is important to me.
I've said this before in other articles but it's been a key reason for actually purchasing consoles in the past.
PS2 - an equal split between the next Resident Evil title being available, the built in DVD player and being able still to play the older Resident Evil games (plus Metal Gear Solid, Dino Crisis, Crash Team Racing, Parasite Eve 2, NHL2000 ...)
PS3 - the only reason we bought this was for backwards compatibility (in the original model at least). We predicted that game series would move over (true for Res Evil and Metal Gear Solid, still waiting on the others ...)
And because this wasn't just a Sony thing - a large bonus to getting a Wii was that the Gamecube games we owned could still be played (again Res Evil - my wife has a thing for that series).
PS4 doesn't have backwards compatibility (other than by whatever makes the PS Now cut - yet ANOTHER subscription service) so with the PS3 soon to be discontinued, I'm beginning to face the very real concern that a large portion of the games that I play will soon be no longer available. And yet most of the games I play on PS3 still are disc based offline (largely Lego games to be honest with the two monsters).
Would my PS+ subscription be better moved over to a subscription of Minecraft Realms so that we could all play online on a selection of devices? If Microsoft had actually got around to getting the Xbox One version of Minecraft work with Android (which i think was promised for last summer ...) there's a very good chance I would have gone this route, especially as I could have potentially shared the cost with a friend so that his little monster could also join in.
As much as I still like the PS4, and there are several games on that system, I would love to play, the quality of service that I'm receiving from Sony is beginning to put me off. I left Orange (now EE) years ago for the same reason - being overcharged for steadily declining service. And I switch utility suppliers yearly to avoid that.
Several of the games that I 'maintain' on the PS3 (such as Badlands, Borderlands 2 and Xcom) are now available to me on my Xbox - in fact I think it may only be Littlebigplanet 2 that I still routinely play on the PS3 that requires the PS+ subscription
I'm sure Sony isn't really going to care about the opinion of one blogger - but there seem to be a lot of outlets that would suggest Live Gold is currently a better option than PS+ - almost certainly with regard to the games available
How many bloggers would it take for Sony to pay attention?
I'm sure in their minds they are expecting everyone to upgrade to PS4, or PS4 Pro, or Neo. But if the service isn't there - why would I? It took me 8 months to save up for a Xbox One - and I haven't started any console slush fund yet. At this point, I'm leaning more and more towards starting my fund for a Scorpio with the PS+ subscription and just accepting that a) I lose a good chunk of my games library (which has happened before) and b) that I just don't play that games library any more
Maybe I'm being unreasonable - PS3 has been going since 2006 - but at this point I've spent a few hundred pounds on a large library of games that I either don't have the consoles to play, or the time to play. And most of which I wouldn't have chosen to play. There have been some gems in that (so glad when Journey finally made it) but if I was given the option to stop paying and just keep the the games that I already have ... well the Youtube channel may well end up even more Xbox focused than it already is ...
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