Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus have been giving gamers the advantage of playing games they don’t own for no additional fee apart from the subscription price. While both Microsoft and Sony have claimed an increase in subscriptions to both services on the two biggest consoles, the larger picture has been contrastingly different if customer satisfaction is considered.
2023 has been a profitable year for PlayStation 5 which continues to outsell the Xbox Series X|S consoles. PlayStation Plus members are leaving the subscription following the recent price hike which gamers don’t find to be justifying the titles they’re provided with every month. November’s free games list has been one of the most disappointing lists for a while, at least in the eyes of some gamers.
Xbox Game Pass Continues to Offer Better Value For Money Compared to PlayStation Plus
PlayStation Plus recently got a price hike for all three tiers. The Essential tier works out in a similar fashion to Game Pass Core which features limited games and online console multiplayer. The Extra and Premium tiers feature a library of downloadable games for the PS5 and PS4 and streaming capabilities of older classics.
Since the 6th of September, the three tiers received a price hike of almost $20 which has stopped many subscribers on their tracks from renewing. This price hike hasn’t gone down well with PlayStation Plus subscribers who continue to get poor titles and perks when compared to what’s being offered by Game Pass.
The final nail was not getting a deal on Black Friday which was reserved for new subscribers and those with a lapsed subscription looking to renew their PlayStation Plus memberships. There are also as many as 11 games leaving the catalog next month including Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Legends of Ethernal, Yakuza 6, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and The Escapists 2 among the most popular ones.
New games on the PlayStation Plus catalog this month include Teardown, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, Superliminal, Dead Island: Riptide DE, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, and a few other titles. Subscribers were not happy when the games were announced by PlayStation on X. On Xbox Game Pass, November has seen the addition of 11 games including Jusant, Football Manager 2024, Wartales, and Coral Island all of which are highly-rated titles.
Here’s how fans reacted to the November line-up for the PlayStation Plus catalog.
It started to become obvious every month that the catalog is going from worse to worse ever since the price increase.
— MAMOUD (@mamoud_xvi) November 15, 2023
One fan on Reddit mentioned that while there’s no problem with titles leaving the library, it’s quite unfortunate that “the big games we’ve been getting recently aren’t justifying the price, and are worse games than a lot of the leaving titles even if they are newer“. A reply to that post mentioned that the subscription is losing its value as it’s “way too expensive for a couple of good games and online play.”
Improved Catalog, Better Monthly Titles, and More Day One Access Needed to Bolster PS Plus Subscriptions
One of the biggest advantages of a Game Pass subscription is getting access to games on the day of their launch. A number of titles from the Xbox Game Studios continue to be made available to Game Pass members on Day One. Add to that the titles from EA Play and players get a plethora of titles to choose from and start playing immediately as soon as the membership is activated.
Another added advantage is that of cross-platform progress saves between Xbox, PC, and eligible mobile devices which are synced online. Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can also stream games onto their mobile devices directly and take off from the last saved progress, as long as a stable internet connection is available.
Currently, a similar method isn’t possible with PlayStation Plus as cloud-saved progress does not sync automatically with the locally saved data on the console. The newly launched PlayStation Portable might work on solving remote gaming issues but it still requires a PlayStation 5 console to work. A simple approach to remote gaming, more eligible devices, and cross-save sync between these devices should have been the priority from Sony rather than a console-tethered portable device.
PlayStation Plus seems to remain in the shadows of Game Pass for the foreseeable future at least and will need something drastic to get anywhere close to the race for the best value-for-money subscription.
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