PS Plus is Sony’s paid service. It allows you to play online and enjoy games at no extra cost. The Japanese brand said 48 million people are subscribers. A good score, but which is struggling to evolve.
On its PlayStation consoles, Sony offers the PlayStation Plus (PS Plus) subscription. For 9 euros per month, the user can play online on their PS4 and PS5, store their saves in the cloud, take advantage of exclusive offers, a library of PS4 titles and receive several “free” games each month. A good deal, then.
During its annual report, Sony lifted the veil on the number of subscribers who take advantage of this offer. That’s 48 million people in total as of December 31, 2021. A good figure, but which is actually quite disappointing for the manufacturer.
The PS Plus is struggling to take off
The PlayStation Plus has indeed not had an incredible year 2021. As of December 31, 2020, it had 47.4 million subscribers. In one year, Sony will therefore have succeeded to attract less than one million players, while 2020 had been a good year with more than 8 million new subscribers. This stagnation can be explained by the saturation of the market (all the players who can subscribe are) as well as by the difficulties encountered by the PS5. If the demand is strong for the console, the supply is struggling to satisfy it. The fault is of course to be attributed to the shortage of semiconductors which is paralyzing the industry and causing repeated stock-outs.
Read also – The PS5 sells less well than the PS4, the shortage weighs on Sony’s results
On the side of Microsoft, note that the figure of 25 million subscribers was advanced a few days ago for the Game Pass. While it would be tempting to compare the two offers, they are in fact very different, since the Redmond company does not offer the same service as Sony at all.
It will be necessary to wait for the Spartacus project to begin the comparisons. As a reminder, Spartacus is the code name given by Sony to a new platform using the GamePass formula. For a monthly subscription, the player will have access to an extensive library at no additional cost. If the thing is not official yet, it could be announced in 2022.
Anyway, the PS Plus formula appeals, but needs a polish to attract new subscribers.
