Sony brings new free games every month for players as part of its PlayStation Plus subscription service for both PS4 and PS5. The new year is right upon us, and PlayStation has already revealed the PS Plus lineup for January 2024 with the best games.
Players have got some good games this whole year but we also saw many titles leave the service, and that too with the increased price for the service. The company is again bringing good titles at the start of the year with the newly announced lineup but it seems like it is trying to take advantage of the new PlayStation owners who got the console during the holidays and gain subscribers.
Is Sony Trying to Gain New subscribers with January’s PS Plus Lineup?
In March last year, Sony revamped the PlayStation Plus service when it introduced the three membership tiers, PS Plus Essential, PS Plus Extra, and PS Plus Premium, each with something new to offer for players. The company promised to keep regularly refreshing the service with new titles dropping every month. It also revealed that several users upgraded to the new tiers but soon the games offered were nothing unique but bland.
The company has now announced the games for January 2024 and the inaugural lineup for 2024 will allow players to get three titles namely A Plague Tale: Requiem, Evil West, and Nobody Saves the World. Requiem is a critically acclaimed title and was also nominated for several awards at the prestigious Game Awards including Game of the Year. The game boasts an amazing story, captivating visuals, brilliant dialogues, and gameplay to keep you hooked to your seats.
Evil West and Nobody Saves the World have also been favorites of many for different reasons. In Nobody Saves the World, players can shift themselves in almost 15 forms including slug, dragon, and more.
Evil West is a third-person shooter title where you go against zombies and monsters. This month’s lineup for Extra and Premium tiers is headlined by Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5 along with 13 other titles including Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, MotoGP 23, Prodeus, Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut, Shadowrun: Hong Kong – Extended Edition, and more.
Sony also increased the prices of all the tiers of its 12-month subscription service in September 2023 across the world by 30%. While it faced severe criticism since many thought it was already quite costly, the company defended the price increase by saying that it needed to adjust according to market conditions and this would help in bringing more high-quality titles to the service.
Although several good titles were added across the months, a number of titles also left the Extra and Premium tier in December including two Yakuza titles, Middle Earth titles, and more. In November, a large number of subscribers did not renew and some went on to cancel their subscriptions due to good titles leaving the service. Even though many new games were getting added, they weren’t of the quality that would justify the price increase.
The backlash after the price increase was so bad that the company even stopped updating the PS Plus subscriber numbers. Players even compared the PS Plus service to the Xbox Game Pass and added that it has more advantages right than than PS Plus with day one releases and cross-platform progression saves being a few of them.
The upcoming games are truly intriguing and will be available on January 2 but last year’s inaugural lineup also had similar exciting titles for players coming to the service. The games were added to the service including Fallout 76, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and more. These games are arguably just as good as the game’s coming next year. However, after these titles, the quality of the games on the service kept going down and the price increase got players more frustrated.
With many games leaving and changes such as price increases plaguing the experience for gamers, January’s lineup might feel like the company is trying to justify the new prices and improve the service but it’s more like it is trying to get new subscribers onto the service as the console sales numbers have been well worldwide this holiday season.
Can PS5 Sales Revive the PS Plus Subscription Service?
The sales of the PS5 console were marred ever since the launch of the console due to the pandemic, which resulted in the shortage of silicon chips and hence the production of the console was affected. The console was finally restocked almost everywhere earlier this year and was available to purchase around the world.
The sales saw a huge boost due to price drops and several bundles with titles like EA Sports FC 24, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and highly anticipated Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 which is a PlayStation exclusive. The company also announced that PS5 is getting a makeover with a slimmer version that saw a cut in volume by 30% and weight by 18% and 24% for both digital and standard versions.
The company even made it accessible for players to shift to a disk version of the console with a detachable disk that can be purchased separately. These models were also made available in November starting with the US as the company wanted to achieve great sales during the holidays. Sony achieved this during the holiday season as PS5 crossed the 50 million sales mark in lifetime sales and the majority of the sales have come during the holidays and this fiscal year.
Judging from the sales numbers of PS5 during the holidays, a large number of people have got the console and with the new owners, the company is eyeing to get them to subscribe to the service. The titles that have been announced to arrive in January 2024 received mostly positive reviews. These games make it seem like the company wants to improve the service with better titles every month when all it might be is just bait to get them to subscribe.
Sony has been doing a lot of things to keep the PS Plus relevant despite facing several hurdles. It recently allowed players to get five free exclusive avatars from the store. This is as part of the Season of Play and players can still get them till January 5, 2024. The avatars include Lord Jin Sakai’s artwork from Ghost of Tsushima and Basim Ibn Ishaq from Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
It remains to be seen how players respond to the new PS Plus offering and if it will help Sony pull new subscribers to the service. Sony has let the players down with the service and the increased price tag and players would surely be looking forward to getting some great deals in exchange for the prices they are paying.
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