Sony has said if their games launch on the new PlayStation Plus they’ll “deteriorate”, while reiterating their Game Pass competitor will not feature new exclusive releases.
The new revamped PlayStation Plus is a new multi-tier service set to launch in June for most markets, and late May for Asian markets outside of Japan. Sony already shared their lineup for June and the many games that will be coming out when the new service launches.
However one thing that we shouldn’t be expecting with this new version of PlayStation Plus is seeing new exclusive titles launching alongside their regular release dates, which Sony has already said won’t happen.
That isn’t to say that major hits won’t be available on the service, as evidenced by games such as the director’s cuts of Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima. Just don’t think that something like Horizon Forbidden West will be coming right away for the service.
In an earnings call, Sony has once again clarified that they will not plan on releasing their new exclusives on PlayStation Plus, something their competitors at Xbox have been doing with their Game Pass subscription.
“I will refrain from making comments on the competitors’ strategy,” said Sony CFO Hikori Totoki. “Our current thinking is to have development costs [and] appropriate R&D investment for quality products, and that will improve the platform and also improve the business in the long run.”
He added, “AAA type titles on PS5, if we distribute that on the subscription services, we may need to shrink the investment needed for that and that will deteriorate the first-party title quality and that is our concern.”
So their main concern is that it would result in them decreasing the budget of their first-party games and therefore quality would also decrease. It’s interesting they believe releasing their new exclusive would mean reducing their investment, meaning they believe there would be less return.
This is a point that Microsoft hasn’t mentioned with their Game Pass subscription, but could be something that Sony is overcompensating for as they make their first steps into the subscription model.
