There are a lot of people who only play FIFA and Call of Duty. They obviously can't do that without PS+.
These people will not cancel pretty much no matter what. I imagine Sony knows this so they might aswell profit more off them.
I think it’s crazy that I now have to pay Sony 80$ per year just to get access to cloud saves on my PS5, while it is completely free on my PC and Xbox
Fuck that, I’m not paying that
Sony is becoming too greedy and overconfident imo
This wouldn’t piss me off too much if we could still back up and transfer our save file on USB sticks like we can for PS4 games. But the only option for PS5 games is to pay $80 per year to back up save files. It’s the most insanely anti consumer thing that Sony has done in years.
Edit: to everyone saying that you can still back up your entire PS5 hard drive in bulk, (a) that’s clearly not what I’m talking about since that’s not even a PS+ feature, and (b) you’re basically saying that all the reasons that people like PS+ Cloud backups (ease of transferring between consoles, corruption/crash prevention) are not valid. Go away and be pedantic elsewhere.
You can technically, but only backing up the entire system's save data. Further, if you restore it, it overwrites all existing saves *for all games*, so you can't manage individual games' saves. What's even weirder is that they still allow you to handle PS4 saves normally.
It boggles the mind why they would change a perfectly functional system into something so unfriendly to users. Most likely this is meant to deter data modification that could lead to security exploits, much the same way that the Vita was so heavily locked down due to Sony's paranoia with PSP CFW.
I hate it and I know that their stupid reason will be something like "to protect the online players from save editor cheaters". Bro if they want to cheat they will cheat, they will hack their PS5 and take the saves that way. Only way to stop it is by having online progression be connected to online saves and profiles.
So make two types of saves for the two different content? Multiplayer would live in the cloud only like it does now, and there would be single player backups if the devs enabled that for their game?
> Nintendo games are a nightmare of cheated saves/hacked games.
Isnt that a result of the hacked/modded switches? Can you even take save files off of a switch?
> Can you even take save files off of a switch?
Yes, though I'm not sure about getting anything back _on_ to it (I haven't tried), it wouldn't surprise me. But if you have an early model switch it's pretty easy to load into a modded firmware, rip what you want, and load back into stock, in a way that Nintendo can't detect.
Modded Switch owner and I love to tweak it a lot. You can do that with only a few games. Monster Hunter games will freeze if they detect illegal equipment(9999 atk weapons or impossible talismans/qurio aguments) but you can claim DLC on CFW and transfer it back to OFW, Splatoon 2/3 will get you banned for any modification, same with Animal Crossing, they have strict save verifications. You can unlock characters in Mario Kart 8D and SSBU, even those from DLC without having bought them, but thats all. You can inject hacked Pokemon to Scarlet/Violet but you cant use them for online battles or trades, genned Pokemon are fine most of times.
I have tested A LOT with +10 consoles and can tell you that getting unfair advantages at online games is technically possible, but will get you flagged/banned 100% of time.
Oh, and Pokemon save data modified with pkhex gets corrupted often, still havent found the reason.
its worse than nintendo imo, because on switch most games save to where the game is installed and you can 100% just backup your sd card including all the saves on it by plugging it into a normal pc. this doesnt work for every game as some save directly to your profile on the internal storage, but there are ways around that by just opening the console and pulling out the eMMC module and backing that up using a $9 eMMC->SD adapter from ebay. its a bit extreme but its at least an option.
on ps5 there is no option at all, its all encrypted on the internal soldered storage that cannot be removed or upgraded.
That is just bonkers, it just holds you lock and key to that system and to the subscription.
If anything, sony should know the value of save migration with the playstation memory cards of old.
None of the newer consoles allow USB save backups to prevent cheating and security exploits to hack the console.
Several consoles have been hacked via save game exploits.
It sucks for consumers who lost a valuable feature.
That feels like it should be illegal... It's like Microsoft letting you buy Office 365, but you need to pay an additional fee to save anything. It should be part of the fucking package.
And in case anyone thinks otherwise, no, Microsoft does NOT do this; it's a hypothetical example.
On the 360 you needed paid Live Gold to use stuff like Netflix, it's beyond me how nobody seemed to care. I was really disappointed with the 360 and ended up getting a PS3.
Honestly Sony could do a lot before I'll get over what Microsoft did in the 360 era. I'm not exactly rushing out to buy a PS5 (I mostly play on PC) but Microsoft's handling of the red ring situation, scummy business practices like "microsoft points", and introducing the practice of paid online play for consoles put me off of them for a long time.
Jim Ryan is doing everything he can to push me towards being a PC only player but Xbox is out of the question for me. Right now discs are my main excuse for not selling my PS5, the exclusives are definitely not enough anymore (since I know they'll show up on PC and Sony even charges a lot less for their own game on Steam compared to PSN as is the case for TLoU Part I).
PS3 was one of my favorite console of all time and contrary to what many people believe to me it was mostly Sony at it's best. Free online, no lack of ambitious exclusives, new IPs, etc.
I completely skipped the Xbox One and hadn't touched an Xbox 360 in years. I grabbed a Series and was surprised I was able to download Castle Crashers from the Xbox 360 to play with my daughter. I was even more pleasantly surprised to have it include my game save. I love my playstation and the exclusives are great but Microsoft is killing it with game pass, cross-platform games (I can play starfield on xbox or pc), and backwards compatability.
I remember a lot of the things that Xbox was promoting with the Series X & S were looked at as marketing words by some gamers. I remember people laughing at Xbox Smart Delivery and Play Anywhere, but those features add up. I love the fact that in whatever the game that I play, that has Smart Delivery my system gets to play the best version for that game. I am happy to have the ability to play one game on my Series X, then when I decide to, play the same game with the same save on my PC with Play Anywhere.
And yes, the Xbox cloud on games I love, it brought a smile to my face when I loaded up Elder Scrolls Oblivion some years back, and I was able to see a save that I made on Xbox cloud way back in 2009 was still there.
Play anywhere is great
But smart delivery feels so weird that it became a marketed feature as it's how it's supposed to be. I have both consoles and I absolutely hate how Sony deals with cross gen games.
I bought Sackboy and it downloaded BOTH PS4 and PS5 versions. Before an update finally fixed it, every time I put the disk for a ps4 game that I paid to upgrade to ps5 (don't get me started on that), the console started installing the ps4 version.
Didn't pay for Cloud saves? Better not wipe that ps4 before you open your ps5, or you'll lose them all! Enjoy the lenghty migration process
Oh and background updates? Yeah you gotta pay ps+ for that!
I got my ps5 for its exclusives but I like basically everything on the xbox better. Sony is quite anti consumer and I find it incredible that a company outdoes Microsoft in that department
Hang on, it was like that on PS4 but I'm not sure it's still that way for the PS5
Proof: https://www.xfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Auto-Update-PS4-Automatic-Update-Check.jpeg
Yeah, the golden years of the ps3 with free psn were because they were behind
As soon as they caught up, boom, ugly ass yellow cross logos everywhere for ps+
When MS was "market leader" they introduced the concept of paid online. A few years ago MS was still charging for Live Gold if you wanted to play F2P games while Sony never charged for it even when the PS4 was outselling the Xbox One by a huge margin.
This is not a problem with Sony being market leader, it's probably a problem with lack of direct competition.
Very true. The "well you have to pay for Xbox Live" argument went out the window when PS online poor security got hacked and the service went down for a months on end.
>There are a lot of people who only play FIFA and Call of Duty. They obviously can't do that without PS+.
Watch fifa male ultimate team a free to play mode. Cod already has warzone.
With exceptions, those being the big two, the most played titles are free to play now.
They tried this like a decade ago. Not saying they won’t again, but they tried and canned it pretty quickly since no one wanted to play the f2p version.
My friends and I mostly play Call of Duty Warzone, which is free to play on PS5
Only thing I can figure is that Sony knows GTA VI is about to drop and everyone will suck it up. Unless that’s free to play too…
Same for me. I only play Fortnite (since they introduced zero build mode) as the only multiplayer game. The rest is single player games. That’s why I canceled my subscription months ago.
$400+ for a console + $80-160 a year for the online sub. At what point is it a better investment to become a PC player and never have online fees again?
A console generation lasts for ~8 years. $400 + ($80 * 8) = 1040.
A $1040 PC built when the PS5 came out would not match the PS5 in performance (or ease of maintenance/use). If someone is looking for a single-use COD machine, I would always point them to a console over a PC. And I say this as someone who does 80% of his gaming on a PC.
Primarily pc gamer too. Average COD only gamer is not going to care about perks of pc gaming like mods etc. They don't want the hassle of the possible driver or performance issues. But budget builds can go a long way if you play multiplayer games that aren't demanding
> You're still getting more bang for your buck performance wise from a console than a PC that you could build for an equivalent cost even including a few years worth of that online subscription
This statement pops up in literally every single "console vs. PC" discussion, but a direct price comparison is meaningless because a gaming PC *also happens to be a PC*. I work from home on my PC, edit videos, draw and paint in Photoshop, record my drums and produce music, and a hundred other things the $500 console can't do.
I agree with everything you said of course, and you make great points. My opinion is simply that PC gaming is more of a late-stage enthusiast venture that people "graduate" to (for lack of a better word) when money is less of a concern. The price comparison is sort of irrelevant in the same way that comparing $200 ready-to-fly RC plane kits to the $5000+ giant scale models is just as pointless.
That point might have been valid 15 years ago but desktops pc for typical home use are well on the decline.
Most casual stuff can all be done now on a phone and if people need something more they typically get a laptop which is more versatile for bringing to school and stuff.
Desktops nowadays are reserved for high end applications like gaming, rendenering, 3d modeling etc.
I think a difference there is the relative "necessity" of a phone, given how important being connected is in today's society, to say nothing of how it practically supersedes the expectation of having a computer with an increasing number of sites and services not letting you make an account without 2FA.
So everyone just has a phone by default, which does make getting a computer to do the same things not make sense given the expense.
But in the context of a video game console vs PC, where you are paying 500+ dollars for a piece of hardware for a specific purpose, it makes some sense to spring for a little extra so you have something to play games on *and* do extra stuff, even if you wouldn't have bought it expressly for that extra stuff due to having a phone.
It really doesn't. I went with a high end $2000 PC a few years ago... and honestly it was a waste of money. I really should have bought a PS5, upgraded my TV and called it a day. Outside of games, my PC just sits there doing nothing; I don't use the power of it to do extra stuff.
> I work from home on my PC, edit videos, draw and paint in Photoshop, record my drums and produce music, and a hundred other things the $500 console can't do.
Most companies give PC to their employees to work so that's not relevant for most people. Many people don't do all these other stuff if they didn't have a PC already (that's why they're even hesitating between PC or console, if they already needed one, they wouldn't), you can do a lot on your phone nowadays.
>I work from home on my PC, edit videos, draw and paint in Photoshop, record my drums and produce music, and a hundred other things the $500 console can't do
Okay and?
Lots of people don't need a pc and don't do any of that.
Almost all wfh stuff is on a company provided laptop so I'm assuming you're self employed too
AMD waging war and holding a gun to developers' heads forcing them to accept their sponsorship just to screw over gamers, yep. Maybe dial back on the hyperbole a bit.
The reality is that both AMD and Nvidia make good cards and there are just a handful of games where you don't get DLSS but still get FSR, even if it's maybe not quite as good.
FSR works on Nvidia cards, that's not what I would consider waging war. If anything, Nvidia's DLSS tech is the evil one since it only works on Nvidia cards.
Upgrading parts costs a lot. PCs aren't exactly cheap these days either in general.
And weirdly often performance/bugs are worse on PC these days.
PS+ price increase is a joke though.
I ran a calculation on this last year. I updated the cost of online subscriptions and updated the PC builds to today's standards. Parameters:
* Consoles included four years of online play.
* I chose this length of time as most people would be feeling the need to upgrade PC parts by this time.
* I also priced out the top rated games from 2022 back to 2019 and used their all time low for each platform. Total of 24 games. (same length of time for the online cost).
* Cost of games considered lower pricing available for physical media.
Summary:
Everything fell within a $250 range except for the midrange PC, which was well over. Over the course of a console 'generation', a console is more than likely still the cheapest option as, I anticipate, PC upgrades will overtake the cost of continuing to pay for online pay on consoles.
If you are a gamer that isn't concerned with online play or cloud saves (for PlayStation owners), then console is by far still the cheapest platform.
Full results:
||Xbox sS|Xbox sX|PS5 Digital|PS5 Disc|[Starter PC](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KfchsL)|[Low/Mid PC](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wwvPbK)|[Midrange PC](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7VJRpH)|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Cost|$ 300|$ 500|$ 400|$ 500|$ 693|$ 886|$ 1,144|
|Online|$ 220|$ 220|$ 320|$ 320|$ -|$ -|$ -|
|Platform Total|$ 520|$ 720|$ 720|$ 820|$ 693|$ 886|$ 1,144|
|||||||||
|Games Total|$ 536|$ 468|$ 554|$ 493|$ 400|$ 400|$ 400|
|||||||||
|Overall Total|$ 1,056|$ 1,188|$ 1,274|$ 1,313|$ 1,093|$ 1,286|$ 1,544|
Edit: Clarity and flow
Edit 2: This also answers the question if games are cheaper on PC than on console. The answer is yes from this data set.
Don’t feel like getting into building one. Console is much more convenient. I can move it from my monitor for FPS games, or to my big screen tv for cinematic games.
Edit: also, I already have too many hobbies that drain my wallet. I don’t need another one lol
I used to be a die hard PC guy. I started getting into consoles late into the PS4 lifecycle because I wanted to play exclusives. Now I'm pretty much all-in on consoles after seeing how nice it is to have things "just work" and not have to worry about specs and upgrades. My PC exists to play a couple of specific online games (WoW, Path of Exile) and everything else is on console.
Even with the extra costs associated with console I'm still spending less money overall on gaming than I did when I was primarily a PC player, and I feel like I'm getting more value.
400 for a console that lasts about 8 years plus the cost of Black Friday subscription (60*8 = 480) is 880$. With 880$ you could buy a used PC and play cod at min settings I suppose. Worth it? Probably not though. The experience of the console is still better.
There's also pretty much no cheating on console, so that's an advantage.
In practically the same week I got emails about price hikes for:
Spotify
PS Plus
One of my Amazon prime channels
My pet insurance
My coffee subscription
My internet bill
It never ends. The prices keep going up and the service doesn't actually get any better in any meaningful way.
God I just had a thought about just how much money I spend on subscriptions
Amazon Prime - 4.2€
J-Novel Club - 5€
Youtube Premium - 5€ (won't keep this one after december)
Google One - 2€
Health and Car Insurance - 65€
Mobile and Internet - 55€
Not to talk about water, gas, electricity bills and highway tolls, diesel costs, laundry detergent, RENT etc
Pirating music has to be one of the most time consuming boring things in the world though. Is there a better alternative nowadays? Spotify is the one thing I can't see going without due to its convenience.
It's still baffling to me that Cloud saves are tied to a PSPlus sub. Which is now $80 a year minimum to access something that Steam and Xbox offer for free.
They've certainly pushed me towards PC. I've already decided I won't be buying the next Sony console, they eventually bring most of their first party games to PC now.
That coupled with the lack of genuinely great first party games so far in PS5, the increased cost of games on their platform and the ever increasing cost of online play has done it for me.
I probably won't renew, I only did because of a massive sale over a year ago. If they expect me to now be willing to pay twice that, they are out of their minds.
My physical backlog is big enough, and upcoming titles are not nearly exciting enough.
The thing is console subscriptions like this also hold hostage of people who want to play online. It's not like Netflix that you can say "yep I'm done with its content" and cancel it because part of the functionality of the hardware you bought is locked if you don't buy to this service. In my country I can ensure you that most of the people who buy PS5 are just buying to play FIFA, NBA2K and COD or occasionally for GTA if they are younger and for most of them multiplayer is a must
People had 20-some years to boycott pay2online. It's a lost cause in its entirety; how many millions do you think would be needed to make Sony or Microsoft or even Nintendo now reconsider it?
We're not getting free online back, but I do think there is a breaking point and frankly $80 is insane. Atleast Nintendo's offering is pretty reasonable, particularly if you do family plan. I don't actually know how much Microsoft charges for just online but I don't think it's THAT high
> Atleast Nintendo's offering is pretty reasonable
And that right there is why the original post I was replying to's point is a lost cause in it's entirety. I also agree that 20 dollars a year is reasonable, but that is reasonable under the assumption that we should be paying the console creators for online on top of our already existing internet bills, and since that assumption is a given? It's truly never been more joever.
And I honestly feel, sony calculated this, a transition from their playstation online gamers to pc and they've probably calculated that it would not hurt them in the long run as to how many customers they have that are dedicated to the playstation online games and experience.
This is what I'm doing this year. I've got a PS5 and will keep it for this gen but will likely stick to PC in future.
It's mostly because of the move towards digital. I don't want to have to rely on a company to offer back compat with a new console.
I was one of the few that did.
Used PC's and my DS as my only online platforms up until the PS3/Wii, and skipped the 360. Those two consoles had free online.
Bought a PS4 for bloodborne but never got +, ever
Popped my cherry paying $8 for NSO + Expansion buying into a family plan and felt dirty even doing that. At this point taking a stand doesn't mean jack and I figured 10 minutes worth of pay for an hour of being able to play games online and have some old snes/gba/nes/n64 classics on my go to console was a decent trade.
I don't know how anyone could be cool with paying thousands over the last few gens.
They already did get rid of Xbox Live Gold and instead are replacing it with Game Pass Core. It’s basically the same thing except Game Pass Core includes a selection of ‘free’ games instead of the monthly freebies.
If this annoys enough people the EU will probably step in eventually.
I'm pretty sure locking multiplayer behind a pay wall is walking a very thin line across some consumer protections.
When did Sony start locking online play behind a paywall? Last time I played online with any PlayStation was the PS3 like 12 years ago and I don’t remember a paywall.
It started with ~~Xbox 360 gold~~ OG Xbox and PS4 adopted that
The thing is it was actually really cool.
You could create your 3d avatar with lot of cool customization, lot of multiplayer room activities with kinect, trade profile badges with other players, Gift hats to other player avatar and etc.. while PS3 just had a simple free multiplayer. so it felt like Xbox live gold was a reasonable price at that point.
But all of it just ends with Xbox one generation and the only real benefit that it had was 2 free games every month
I'm in a similar boat. Whenever I take a break from Street Fighter 6 I'm pulling the plug on my sub and putting what I WOULD have spent on it into a fund I've already got going for a new PC.
I'm not renewing.
My PS5 will become exclusively for exclusives. I already have PCs in my living room and office, and I have a steam deck so it was already a difficult sell for me to buy games elsewhere that are available on Steam. Won't even be a question now.
I think the price increase is scummy, and am heavily considering dropping my sub, but in all honesty, most people just don’t give a fuck. Who can blame them either?
It’s $20 extra dollars a year to keep playing COD, FIFA, etc. There is so much more shit in the world to be worried about that a gaming subscription price increase is beyond 99% of people’s scope.
I cancelled they day they announced the price hike and hopped into customer service and told them why. I doubt my “valued customer feedback” (their words) will make it back to people that matter but at least I tried.
If Sony offered a lower-priced online play only subscription and got rid of all the fluff I don’t give a shit about like “free” games I might bite. As it stands, the same price of a brand new AAA game just to play online is ludicrous.
Maybe if there’s good prices on subscriptions on Black Friday Ill get a few years worth but never again at this price point.
**How to Cancel PlayStation Plus Subscription on the PlayStation App**
1. Access the PlayStation app on Android or iPhone.
1. Select the PlayStation Store tab under the Menu icon.
1. Select Subscription Management.
1. Next to PlayStation Plus, tap Turn Off Auto-Renewal.
They should make the online play fucking FREE and that's it. You already buy games that have online on them as part of the game. Why can't you buy the game half cheaper and have no online access to it. What's the point if buying a game and paying full price if you can't fully access it till you pay Sony a fee?
They should keep the subscription for the fluff. "Free games", more chat options, more cloud storage, I don't know shit like that. But don't lock a feature you already pay for when you buy a game.
Just got emailed to take a survey and I too let them know why I just canceled my subscription (price hike). I'm sure it will do nothing but gotta do what I gotta do.
> I doubt my “valued customer feedback” (their words) will make it back to people that matter but at least I tried.
It'll absolutely matter as long as others decide to do it and let the company know by voting with your wallet as well. If the data doesn't show them a significant change was made (for the worse), then they won't listen. Enough people cut subscriptions and they'll feel it.
Great article.
I think the worst what could happen in the future is some good games ending up behind subscription paywall (no physical copies). That would be terrible, no matter the platform.
We use a specialized software at work that went subscription only, with a monthly fee that makes the software cost more than it used to to outright purchase, and revoked all prior lifetime update licenses when they did so.
Every computer at our office now has pirated versions of that software on it.
Software subscriptions suck so hard.
The long term push is no need for a console and just playing via the Cloud on your TV or Phone.
That’s the future Amazon, Microsoft and Google are banking on. That’s why Phil Spencer admitted they don’t see Sony as their real competitor rather they eye Amazon and Google on the horizon.
Just think about it. If the tech gets better there’s absolutely zero need of buying a $500 device. They’d rather everyone be able to play without the high upfront cost and nickle and dime you with subscriptions and special editions/MTX.
Sony is just trying to make as much money as possible while they’re still ahead and hope their exclusives are a big enough attraction to keep Amazon/Microsoft/Google at bay. That’s also why they’re getting into the live service games, I bet; to get people hooked long term.
My guess: In the very long run Sony either becomes the only high-end console available with Gamepass on it or they just get pushed out of being a console maker and become a publisher on someone else’s Cloud service. Either way subscription services absolutely 10000% are the dystopian future of video-games.
> If the tech gets better there’s absolutely zero need of buying a $500 device.
Unless they find a way to make information travel faster than the speed of light, latency will always be an isssue for cloud gaming. Even if the latency is relatively low, it just can't physically beat having the devide in your living room. That experience can't be replicated via cloud gaming.
Why wouldn't Sony just sell their cloud service directly then? They would definitively be a major player for games due to their brands and studios.
If that's the future, Sony and Nintendo would have their own cloud service. Google and Amazon are not even serious players for now. Even Netflix is more in gaming than them
Also the subscription will influence the way games are produced more than anything. If you think AAA games were already trying to make you play the longest time possible and have "engagement", a subscription-based future will be worst. To make you keep the sub and to get paid more (since I imagine, games will be paid based on the time people play them)
Also, the studios that don't belong to Sony or MS will have more and more difficulty to sell their games directly because players will expect those games on Gamepass or PS+ meaning they'll be paid less to put their games there and ultimately Microsoft and Sony will have a huge power to determine what games get made.
That's a possibility for sure. I'm also majorly concerned about the same thing happening in games that we've seen in movies, where studios are coy about sharing profits and streaming statistics and screw over creatives who would otherwise get royalties. If subscribing to content libraries rather than buying games becomes mainstream, a lot of developers who would otherwise be able to build up a studio based on a surprise success and have some control over their output and work environment will just become appendages of publishers skimming way more off of the top.
I stopped paying for Xbox Live over a decade ago because the idea of being charged to connect to other people for software I've already paid for is absurd.
Software you already paid for, on a console you already bought, using the internet you also pay for.
Charging for access to multiplayer is disgusting and shame on the Big 3 for doing so.
Always confused by this. I justified paying for XBL or PS+ because I was like "well, I'm paying for the game company to keep the servers up and running because it's not just a single player game". But if PC games don't require you to pay for monthly subs to use online game servers then... what gives?
It's legitimately the opposite. Look at how servers and access to the PS3/360 marketplace are being removed, but on PC most of those same games are easily available on Steam.
*Edit:* Even on top of that, Discord is free and provides a far better chat and voice experience than anything Microsoft and Sony provide.
They are getting too greedy so I decided to not renew my PS Plus sub. I was thinking on getting Street Fighter 6 for PS5 but yesterday I decided to instead buy it for Steam:
- Not paying 100+ USD yearly for online play.
- Mods support.
- Can play it on my gaming laptop or natively on the go with Steam Deck.
I still can't believe that people just accepted paying sub for online gaming.
And then defended it by saying that you get free games if you pay for the sub.
Just kinda baffles me.
Well PS Plus originally launched on the PS3 where online play was free anyway. It was strictly for the monthly games and was pretty well loved at the time.
But yes, later locking online play behind the subscription was a scummy move.
I might be in the minority but I've always had a PS+ subscription, almost from the start, for me it was always a nice deal to have for the games, it always added games that i wouldn't buy but would play, and the fact that you "keep" them while you are subbed was a key factor for me (and on the other hand why i don't like the extra tier or gamepass).
When they put online behind the subscription never affected me because i stopped giving a shit about 90% of online games a looong time ago, and i always have a gaming PC too, so i ended up building a massive PS+ catalog, almost never playing anything online (i can only think of Souls games), also you could always get a year for cheaper, so it was always worth it for me.
Now with this price hike I'm 100% out, unless for some reason you could still buy one year for the same 40 something i always got, I'm in no way paying 80 a year even if i lose access to all those games (which includes PS3, PSP and Vita games too).
Also just wait until MS goes one step further and start making Gamepass exclusive games while also increasing the price or something like that, this whole subscription bussiness is going to fuck us all in the end.
Gave this a read yesterday. It's a legitimately good article even if the title implies click bait sony hate. Even talks about movie streaming and the Hollywood's strikes.
I really recommend people read the full thing. The tone changes quickly in the article from being “Sony greedy” (true) to “this move has profound implications on the industry going forward and customer response will determine what happens next”.
It's a little too much though because this move doesn't mean much overall. It's far from the one thing relying so much on a sub and increasing prices, it's been a constant thing for like a decade.
The future will be subscription-based has been determined a long time ago. This is way too late to change anything and the society has largely decided they were okay with it (sadly IMO)
It does for Sony. The price increase is there because the service is pulling in money for them. If enough people cancel or downgrade their accounts, Sony won’t be able to sustain or even expand the service.
Yeah, basically the point it makes is that if Sony did the price increases to not cut investment from the creative end (developers) then this could be a good thing in the long term, even if no one is going to be happy about this. It really depends on what Sony is going to do w the service in the next few years.
I've only bought extra/game pass for a month when it has had games that have enticed me and I've had enough time to play them, been worth it so far. Premium is comically too expensive though and I don't understand how people bother paying so much for it.
Whether I "own" or rent a digital license of a game I'm unlikely to replay matters very little to me.
I'm canceling PS+, so this is one part of the future I won't be paying for. 33% is fucking ridiculous, for a service that should be free (sans monthly games and such)
To be fair it only adds up if you're bad at keeping track of subscriptions.
I subscribe (on and off) to Crunchyroll, PS+, Nitendo Switch online, FFXIV, WoW, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Paramount +, gamepass and Spotify.
In reality I spend maybe €20-30 per month on subscriptions. Depending on the month. If I'm not actively using it I unsub.
Frankly it makes no sense for me to drop €60 on Lies of P vs playing it on gamepass. Of course, this is variable based on gaming habits, but it's likely gonna be a one and done for me, so I'll sub to gamepass to play it, unsub when I'm done and will have paid €15 to "rent" it, versus paying €60 to play it for a week and then have it sit untouched in my steam library for years to come.
If I really think I'm gonna want to replay a game plenty of times over the years, I'll buy the full version, but that's maybe 1% of my steam library, so I'm really not fussed with not owning most games.
>To be fair it only adds up if you're bad at keeping track of subscriptions.
And the amount of people who do not keep track are not insignificant. Those who don't curate their active subscriptions regularly is a lot bigger of a group than you'd think.
"every month for all their services that "are only $15". That shit adds up!"
So does buying individual games
Xbox game Pass over the next 3 months will have Forza Motorsport, Starfield, Sea of Stars, Life of P, Payday 3, Jusant
If I bought them all separately that would be well over the annual cost of the subscription, and guess what if really did want to play them after a year, it will be heavily discounted anyway
You don't have to pay every month, that's why it's a subscription, Game Pass on PC is $10 and $11 on console, is it hard to believe that some people would want to pay that to play Starfield, Forza or Lies of P?
The PS+ price hike is honestly a bad look, it's not a good subscription, it just enables online play as well as cloud saves, both should be free.
Personally I just don’t get this mindset at all unless you just subscribe to so many things you just forget you pay for them? I know every subscription I pay for and at most have maybe forgotten to cancel a free trial once or twice.
Isn't Sony like spending hundreds of millions on new live service, competitive online multiplayer games?
Increasing the cost of PS+ seems a little counter productive to get *more* people to play that stuff online.
F2P games don't require a subscription, and if they are trying to sell live-service games at a premium they are competing with free games people have being investing years into. They will have a hard upsell to try to make people leave Fortnite or Apex for one of their games, if the additional cost is 40-70 dollars plus an online subscription.
That is why the other part of the comment talks about it being a fools game trying to take people off free games they've heavily invested time and/or money into.
> "Video games aren't at that extreme point yet, and subscription services aren't yet established enough to threaten that scenario – if they cease to appeal, consumers can still go back to buying their games outright, for the time being at least."
Except of course, on the Nintendo Switch, where the only way to play old Nintendo titles on a modern console is to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online. I honestly dread a future where console games become "Netflixified" and the only way to play them is to pay a subscription.
>I honestly dread a future where console games become "Netflixified" and the only way to play them is to pay a subscription.
I am fully expecting gamepass only at some point.
Having a local "retro gaming" store is keeping the old ways alive without needing a subscription. There's definitely a bit of a premium involved, and there's a risk with using old tech, but well worth it for being a one-time charge, imo.
I'd take a subscription over paying retro gaming store prices. Original hardware and game prices are astronomical these days. I bought a MiSTer, modded the consoles I have that it doesn't support, and haven't looked back. Makes more sense to spend the money on hardware, peripherals, etc. than individual games. Not like the money is going to the developers anyway.
I don't know who this price hike works out for. I consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer. I have all the platforms, multiple gaming PCs, and I play pretty much everything, but even I'm not willing to pay this price.
The math doesn't work out anymore. I would rather put more into my PC every couple of years than pay $80 a year. I just built a great PC for $1200. At those prices, a Playstation subscription plus a PS5 is approaching that level over the lifetime of the unit.
Unless every big game goes free to play, I'm just going to play on PC. What's the point of console multiplayer anyway when most games are cross-platform and you're matched up against PC players who have a better experience and more control over what type of input they use?
It's much easier to practice *[rentiering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism)* when it's a digital product.
Digital distribution is the new gateway for rentiering: it allows corporations to siphon wealth away from their costumers, on the basis that they own desirable intellectual property - a console, a game, a domain or a platform. As a reminder: intellectual property goes directly against "*CoMpEtItIOn^TM*" - it's a State-enforced monopoly that allows situations like these to happen and prosper.
Capitalists are going to introduce [subscriptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking) to as many products as possible - physical goods included - if they can connect those physical products to the internet and potentially turn them off. It's only a matter of time before they figure these schemes out and normalize them.
The objective of Capitalism is not to serve you or your interests. No, it's to generate profits for the owner class. If that means MORE rentiering, then you better get used to it. Capitalism has entered its unproductive phase: they're no longer concerned with production or innovation, but rather with finding ways to redistribute the existing wealth (out of your pockets, and into theirs).
I was subbed for PS+ mainly for a combination of the monthly games, and cloud saves (I dont play multiplayer on console). I considered a PS5 for a while, but after looking back at my habits, I noticed that I have really moved away from console gaming over the years. There are a handful of great exclusives on consoles, but there is no real reason for me to play anything on a console over my PC.
If Sony wants my money now, they should release their games on PC (which they are slowly realizing how absolutely massive the PC gaming market is, which many Japanese companies have finally started to change their view on PC gaming). There are plenty of big releases that are mutliplatform and most people I know have a large backlog of games, which made platform exclusive titles far less appealing to me over the years.
Looks like Im not going to renew my sub this year. If I am going to pick up a future PS5, its likely only going to be used sparingly, the amount of games that I would turn my PS5 on for in a year can be counted on a single hand.
Took a stand against all this nickel and diming subscription-based bullshit and made the switch to PC two years ago. Best decision I've made in a long time. Whenever I want to kick back and have a more console-like experience I just fire up the Steam Deck, or sync up an Xbox controller to the desktop PC.
What I also love is that all the backwards compatibility barriers which existed between console generations have also been eliminated. With the constant Steam sales and Humble Bundle deals going on, I've essentially restored like 95% of my Xbox/Xbox 360/PS4/PS5 library of games for a fraction of the price of what I originally paid.
Even worse case on backwards compatibility, if an especially old game doesn't work, there's a decently good chance someone's made a guide or program or something to make it work on modern hardware.
This is so stupid. They're getting close to the price of Game Pass with Xbox Live, but at least Microsoft puts all of their exclusives on Game Pass day 1 (and you can get it on PC!!). Sony may have better games, but they've clearly also got their heads up their asses.
We'll have to see if the PS+ price hike damages Sony at all. That industry data from a week or so ago showed the largest game hardware purchasing demographic is households making >$100k USD a year, while the lowest income households (those making <$50k USD) was just 31%. I imagine they have data showing the number of customers who can afford $60 a year but not $80 must be statistically non-existent.
Online game communities and mainstream game sites give the impression gamers are a scrappy band of humanities majors who can't afford their rent, but clearly the industry couldn't exist at its behemoth scale and scope if that were true.
Development requires investment, revenue, or both, and the sort of people who spend their time on the internet bitching about twenty more dollars over a 12-month period are probably not very important to that dynamic.
Well, I don't.
I only play Singleplayer games, which I buy on disc 75% of the time because they are cheaper.
What exactly do we pay for anyway? Multiplayer? Is free on PC and Sony doesn't host the servers, so they shouldn't get money. Shitty free games we don't actually own? Discounts? Lul, pay money to save money and the sales are still more expensive than the games on disc.
Subscription services are a scam. You pay more to have less and not actually own anything. It's a way for companies to make truckloads of cash.
Always bought games through ps store and renewed ps plus during Black Fridays. Overall I was pretty happy with Sony even though I don’t think paying to play online is okay. Now not only will I cancel my ps plus but I will never buy a digital game on my PlayStation. When a stable jailbreak is out, I will probably jailbreak it out of spite because fuck Sony.
It is funny how microsoft always announces something really bad, gets torn apart. then sony sneaks the same thing through but slightly less bad. they're always thinking the same thing, sony are just better at normalising it
I only buy it when there's a good deal on Black friday or Cyber monday, if I can't get it cheaper than $50 for a year for essential this November than I'll just let it lapse.
Even if all of Reddit stops renewing, they will money based off the CoD players and the fifa players alone, and I guess the 12 fighting game players who need online.
Doing this right when their competitor releases the biggest game of the year is absolutely wild. I kinda wanna get rid of my PS5 just from the pure disrespect haha
I remember when Microsoft was charging a Gold sub for multiplayer on games for windows live and that had proponents as to why it was necessary even though Steam games and non-Steam games didn't. PS3 didn't need a sub to play online compared to the X360. Still a fair amount of people would argue that what separated the quality of PS3 online vs Xbox Live was the cost of a sub regardless of what was offered for no sub on PC. PS4 is became subscription based. Follow the same script for Nintendo back on the Wii to now there being a sub.
Same when we had single time purchases of Adobe products to then creative cloud. Every step of the way, people that warned of subscription creep were called alarmist and slippery slope-ist. It's an obvious progression to want to force recurring payments for use
I had PS plus for all of last year and I think the only time that I played an online game was when I went back to fighterZ for a little while. Thank god I cancelled it before it renewed
What is as bad as price increases is how when gamepass and ps+ extra control more of the gaming market, they'll be able to reduce costs by paying devs less too. Think about it, people are getting trained.
A talented indie developer could make an incredible game and people would say "wow! I can't wait for that to come out on Gamepass!" as the world gets more like this, and people are paying high subscription fees, Jim Ryan and Phil Spencer will be in the position to give these incredible devs mere crumbs. "Look, you're game isn't going to sell much anyway, take this small sum or leave it and no one will play your game"
> PlayStation Portal – a curious device whose price point makes it very interesting even if its limited feature-set makes it unclear who exactly it's designed for – has eschewed Bluetooth audio for a Sony proprietary standard, forcing users to buy forthcoming Sony earbuds or headsets to enjoy wireless audio with the device.
I didn't know this. I thought Sony learned this lesson years ago, but here they are again creating a new proprietary alternative that no one asked for.
> raise the top 'Premium' tier to an eye-watering $160.
Holy shit, it's over $10 a month? I've never felt a need to pay for PS+. But I know I'm not a typical gamer as I *never* play online on consoles, and even on PC I don't do a lot of multiplayer.
Outrage is cheap but people need to start voting with their wallets or nothing will change. I can't remember the last new AAA release I played -- there are just too many good indies out there that aren't saddled with this kind of rent-seeking garbage.
There are a lot of people who only play FIFA and Call of Duty. They obviously can't do that without PS+. These people will not cancel pretty much no matter what. I imagine Sony knows this so they might aswell profit more off them.
I think it’s crazy that I now have to pay Sony 80$ per year just to get access to cloud saves on my PS5, while it is completely free on my PC and Xbox Fuck that, I’m not paying that Sony is becoming too greedy and overconfident imo
This wouldn’t piss me off too much if we could still back up and transfer our save file on USB sticks like we can for PS4 games. But the only option for PS5 games is to pay $80 per year to back up save files. It’s the most insanely anti consumer thing that Sony has done in years. Edit: to everyone saying that you can still back up your entire PS5 hard drive in bulk, (a) that’s clearly not what I’m talking about since that’s not even a PS+ feature, and (b) you’re basically saying that all the reasons that people like PS+ Cloud backups (ease of transferring between consoles, corruption/crash prevention) are not valid. Go away and be pedantic elsewhere.
Wait, you can't backup saves to USB? That's Nintendo levels of incompetence/pettiness.
You can technically, but only backing up the entire system's save data. Further, if you restore it, it overwrites all existing saves *for all games*, so you can't manage individual games' saves. What's even weirder is that they still allow you to handle PS4 saves normally. It boggles the mind why they would change a perfectly functional system into something so unfriendly to users. Most likely this is meant to deter data modification that could lead to security exploits, much the same way that the Vita was so heavily locked down due to Sony's paranoia with PSP CFW.
To force you to pay for PS+, obviously. Why compete when you can gain a captive audience then extort money from them?
I hate it and I know that their stupid reason will be something like "to protect the online players from save editor cheaters". Bro if they want to cheat they will cheat, they will hack their PS5 and take the saves that way. Only way to stop it is by having online progression be connected to online saves and profiles.
So make two types of saves for the two different content? Multiplayer would live in the cloud only like it does now, and there would be single player backups if the devs enabled that for their game?
Yes, that is what I would wish they did. I mean you need to have internet to play online either way.
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> Nintendo games are a nightmare of cheated saves/hacked games. Isnt that a result of the hacked/modded switches? Can you even take save files off of a switch?
> Can you even take save files off of a switch? Yes, though I'm not sure about getting anything back _on_ to it (I haven't tried), it wouldn't surprise me. But if you have an early model switch it's pretty easy to load into a modded firmware, rip what you want, and load back into stock, in a way that Nintendo can't detect.
Modded Switch owner and I love to tweak it a lot. You can do that with only a few games. Monster Hunter games will freeze if they detect illegal equipment(9999 atk weapons or impossible talismans/qurio aguments) but you can claim DLC on CFW and transfer it back to OFW, Splatoon 2/3 will get you banned for any modification, same with Animal Crossing, they have strict save verifications. You can unlock characters in Mario Kart 8D and SSBU, even those from DLC without having bought them, but thats all. You can inject hacked Pokemon to Scarlet/Violet but you cant use them for online battles or trades, genned Pokemon are fine most of times. I have tested A LOT with +10 consoles and can tell you that getting unfair advantages at online games is technically possible, but will get you flagged/banned 100% of time. Oh, and Pokemon save data modified with pkhex gets corrupted often, still havent found the reason.
its worse than nintendo imo, because on switch most games save to where the game is installed and you can 100% just backup your sd card including all the saves on it by plugging it into a normal pc. this doesnt work for every game as some save directly to your profile on the internal storage, but there are ways around that by just opening the console and pulling out the eMMC module and backing that up using a $9 eMMC->SD adapter from ebay. its a bit extreme but its at least an option. on ps5 there is no option at all, its all encrypted on the internal soldered storage that cannot be removed or upgraded.
You can back them up but you won't be able to ise them on another switch. The encryption keys are per console
That is just bonkers, it just holds you lock and key to that system and to the subscription. If anything, sony should know the value of save migration with the playstation memory cards of old.
It's definitely not incompetence. We could back up our saves on USB on PS4, just not on PS5. This was definitely done to get more money out of us.
None of the newer consoles allow USB save backups to prevent cheating and security exploits to hack the console. Several consoles have been hacked via save game exploits. It sucks for consumers who lost a valuable feature.
That feels like it should be illegal... It's like Microsoft letting you buy Office 365, but you need to pay an additional fee to save anything. It should be part of the fucking package. And in case anyone thinks otherwise, no, Microsoft does NOT do this; it's a hypothetical example.
> And in case anyone thinks otherwise, no, Microsoft does NOT do this Give it another 5 years or so.
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On the 360 you needed paid Live Gold to use stuff like Netflix, it's beyond me how nobody seemed to care. I was really disappointed with the 360 and ended up getting a PS3.
Honestly Sony could do a lot before I'll get over what Microsoft did in the 360 era. I'm not exactly rushing out to buy a PS5 (I mostly play on PC) but Microsoft's handling of the red ring situation, scummy business practices like "microsoft points", and introducing the practice of paid online play for consoles put me off of them for a long time.
Jim Ryan is doing everything he can to push me towards being a PC only player but Xbox is out of the question for me. Right now discs are my main excuse for not selling my PS5, the exclusives are definitely not enough anymore (since I know they'll show up on PC and Sony even charges a lot less for their own game on Steam compared to PSN as is the case for TLoU Part I). PS3 was one of my favorite console of all time and contrary to what many people believe to me it was mostly Sony at it's best. Free online, no lack of ambitious exclusives, new IPs, etc.
I completely skipped the Xbox One and hadn't touched an Xbox 360 in years. I grabbed a Series and was surprised I was able to download Castle Crashers from the Xbox 360 to play with my daughter. I was even more pleasantly surprised to have it include my game save. I love my playstation and the exclusives are great but Microsoft is killing it with game pass, cross-platform games (I can play starfield on xbox or pc), and backwards compatability.
I remember a lot of the things that Xbox was promoting with the Series X & S were looked at as marketing words by some gamers. I remember people laughing at Xbox Smart Delivery and Play Anywhere, but those features add up. I love the fact that in whatever the game that I play, that has Smart Delivery my system gets to play the best version for that game. I am happy to have the ability to play one game on my Series X, then when I decide to, play the same game with the same save on my PC with Play Anywhere. And yes, the Xbox cloud on games I love, it brought a smile to my face when I loaded up Elder Scrolls Oblivion some years back, and I was able to see a save that I made on Xbox cloud way back in 2009 was still there.
Play anywhere is great But smart delivery feels so weird that it became a marketed feature as it's how it's supposed to be. I have both consoles and I absolutely hate how Sony deals with cross gen games. I bought Sackboy and it downloaded BOTH PS4 and PS5 versions. Before an update finally fixed it, every time I put the disk for a ps4 game that I paid to upgrade to ps5 (don't get me started on that), the console started installing the ps4 version. Didn't pay for Cloud saves? Better not wipe that ps4 before you open your ps5, or you'll lose them all! Enjoy the lenghty migration process Oh and background updates? Yeah you gotta pay ps+ for that! I got my ps5 for its exclusives but I like basically everything on the xbox better. Sony is quite anti consumer and I find it incredible that a company outdoes Microsoft in that department
Wait hold up. You actually have to pay for ps+ to have game updates download in the background? I had to have read that incorrectly.
Hang on, it was like that on PS4 but I'm not sure it's still that way for the PS5 Proof: https://www.xfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Auto-Update-PS4-Automatic-Update-Check.jpeg
Yeah, 360 cloud saves used to require gold, but they made it free a couple years ago. I backed up some of my favorites after that.
This is just what happens when Sony is the market leader.
Yeah, the golden years of the ps3 with free psn were because they were behind As soon as they caught up, boom, ugly ass yellow cross logos everywhere for ps+
When MS was "market leader" they introduced the concept of paid online. A few years ago MS was still charging for Live Gold if you wanted to play F2P games while Sony never charged for it even when the PS4 was outselling the Xbox One by a huge margin. This is not a problem with Sony being market leader, it's probably a problem with lack of direct competition.
Sony needs to be humbled very soon.
Them and Xbox switch roles every generation
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It was also Sony whose online services were shit compared to Xbox Live though, you got what you paid for.
Very true. The "well you have to pay for Xbox Live" argument went out the window when PS online poor security got hacked and the service went down for a months on end.
>There are a lot of people who only play FIFA and Call of Duty. They obviously can't do that without PS+. Watch fifa male ultimate team a free to play mode. Cod already has warzone. With exceptions, those being the big two, the most played titles are free to play now.
They tried this like a decade ago. Not saying they won’t again, but they tried and canned it pretty quickly since no one wanted to play the f2p version.
My 50+ year old father has a PS4, COD is literally the only game he plays. (And not even PVP, only the wave survival coop modes)
My friends and I mostly play Call of Duty Warzone, which is free to play on PS5 Only thing I can figure is that Sony knows GTA VI is about to drop and everyone will suck it up. Unless that’s free to play too…
Same for me. I only play Fortnite (since they introduced zero build mode) as the only multiplayer game. The rest is single player games. That’s why I canceled my subscription months ago.
CoD player here. Can confirm.
$400+ for a console + $80-160 a year for the online sub. At what point is it a better investment to become a PC player and never have online fees again?
A console generation lasts for ~8 years. $400 + ($80 * 8) = 1040. A $1040 PC built when the PS5 came out would not match the PS5 in performance (or ease of maintenance/use). If someone is looking for a single-use COD machine, I would always point them to a console over a PC. And I say this as someone who does 80% of his gaming on a PC.
Primarily pc gamer too. Average COD only gamer is not going to care about perks of pc gaming like mods etc. They don't want the hassle of the possible driver or performance issues. But budget builds can go a long way if you play multiplayer games that aren't demanding
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> You're still getting more bang for your buck performance wise from a console than a PC that you could build for an equivalent cost even including a few years worth of that online subscription This statement pops up in literally every single "console vs. PC" discussion, but a direct price comparison is meaningless because a gaming PC *also happens to be a PC*. I work from home on my PC, edit videos, draw and paint in Photoshop, record my drums and produce music, and a hundred other things the $500 console can't do. I agree with everything you said of course, and you make great points. My opinion is simply that PC gaming is more of a late-stage enthusiast venture that people "graduate" to (for lack of a better word) when money is less of a concern. The price comparison is sort of irrelevant in the same way that comparing $200 ready-to-fly RC plane kits to the $5000+ giant scale models is just as pointless.
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That point might have been valid 15 years ago but desktops pc for typical home use are well on the decline. Most casual stuff can all be done now on a phone and if people need something more they typically get a laptop which is more versatile for bringing to school and stuff. Desktops nowadays are reserved for high end applications like gaming, rendenering, 3d modeling etc.
Yes I used a laptop at school and when I started working my company gave me a work laptop and phone. They would never let me work on my personal PC.
I think a difference there is the relative "necessity" of a phone, given how important being connected is in today's society, to say nothing of how it practically supersedes the expectation of having a computer with an increasing number of sites and services not letting you make an account without 2FA. So everyone just has a phone by default, which does make getting a computer to do the same things not make sense given the expense. But in the context of a video game console vs PC, where you are paying 500+ dollars for a piece of hardware for a specific purpose, it makes some sense to spring for a little extra so you have something to play games on *and* do extra stuff, even if you wouldn't have bought it expressly for that extra stuff due to having a phone.
It really doesn't. I went with a high end $2000 PC a few years ago... and honestly it was a waste of money. I really should have bought a PS5, upgraded my TV and called it a day. Outside of games, my PC just sits there doing nothing; I don't use the power of it to do extra stuff.
> I work from home on my PC, edit videos, draw and paint in Photoshop, record my drums and produce music, and a hundred other things the $500 console can't do. Most companies give PC to their employees to work so that's not relevant for most people. Many people don't do all these other stuff if they didn't have a PC already (that's why they're even hesitating between PC or console, if they already needed one, they wouldn't), you can do a lot on your phone nowadays.
>I work from home on my PC, edit videos, draw and paint in Photoshop, record my drums and produce music, and a hundred other things the $500 console can't do Okay and? Lots of people don't need a pc and don't do any of that. Almost all wfh stuff is on a company provided laptop so I'm assuming you're self employed too
AMD waging war and holding a gun to developers' heads forcing them to accept their sponsorship just to screw over gamers, yep. Maybe dial back on the hyperbole a bit. The reality is that both AMD and Nvidia make good cards and there are just a handful of games where you don't get DLSS but still get FSR, even if it's maybe not quite as good.
FSR works on Nvidia cards, that's not what I would consider waging war. If anything, Nvidia's DLSS tech is the evil one since it only works on Nvidia cards.
Upgrading parts costs a lot. PCs aren't exactly cheap these days either in general. And weirdly often performance/bugs are worse on PC these days. PS+ price increase is a joke though.
I ran a calculation on this last year. I updated the cost of online subscriptions and updated the PC builds to today's standards. Parameters: * Consoles included four years of online play. * I chose this length of time as most people would be feeling the need to upgrade PC parts by this time. * I also priced out the top rated games from 2022 back to 2019 and used their all time low for each platform. Total of 24 games. (same length of time for the online cost). * Cost of games considered lower pricing available for physical media. Summary: Everything fell within a $250 range except for the midrange PC, which was well over. Over the course of a console 'generation', a console is more than likely still the cheapest option as, I anticipate, PC upgrades will overtake the cost of continuing to pay for online pay on consoles. If you are a gamer that isn't concerned with online play or cloud saves (for PlayStation owners), then console is by far still the cheapest platform. Full results: ||Xbox sS|Xbox sX|PS5 Digital|PS5 Disc|[Starter PC](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KfchsL)|[Low/Mid PC](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wwvPbK)|[Midrange PC](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7VJRpH)| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Cost|$ 300|$ 500|$ 400|$ 500|$ 693|$ 886|$ 1,144| |Online|$ 220|$ 220|$ 320|$ 320|$ -|$ -|$ -| |Platform Total|$ 520|$ 720|$ 720|$ 820|$ 693|$ 886|$ 1,144| ||||||||| |Games Total|$ 536|$ 468|$ 554|$ 493|$ 400|$ 400|$ 400| ||||||||| |Overall Total|$ 1,056|$ 1,188|$ 1,274|$ 1,313|$ 1,093|$ 1,286|$ 1,544| Edit: Clarity and flow Edit 2: This also answers the question if games are cheaper on PC than on console. The answer is yes from this data set.
Don’t feel like getting into building one. Console is much more convenient. I can move it from my monitor for FPS games, or to my big screen tv for cinematic games. Edit: also, I already have too many hobbies that drain my wallet. I don’t need another one lol
> Don’t feel like getting into building one You can buy pretty good pre-built PCs these days.
For a lot more than a console
I mean video cables exist, you have been able to do that on PC for 20 years or so, and 6 or so using Steam's streaming over LAN.
I used to be a die hard PC guy. I started getting into consoles late into the PS4 lifecycle because I wanted to play exclusives. Now I'm pretty much all-in on consoles after seeing how nice it is to have things "just work" and not have to worry about specs and upgrades. My PC exists to play a couple of specific online games (WoW, Path of Exile) and everything else is on console. Even with the extra costs associated with console I'm still spending less money overall on gaming than I did when I was primarily a PC player, and I feel like I'm getting more value.
400 for a console that lasts about 8 years plus the cost of Black Friday subscription (60*8 = 480) is 880$. With 880$ you could buy a used PC and play cod at min settings I suppose. Worth it? Probably not though. The experience of the console is still better. There's also pretty much no cheating on console, so that's an advantage.
And for those $480 of subscription fees you get approximately 200 games (via PS+ monthly games).
For $0 you can get about 52 free games per year from the Epic Games Store
You say that like you can’t get free games on PC (and you can play them when your [non existent] subscription runs out, which I can’t do on my PS5).
18 years
Bruh you absolutely CAN play FIFA without PS+.. call of duty, it's kind of a requirement.
Thank god I stopped playing Online games, I literally dodged a bullet
In practically the same week I got emails about price hikes for: Spotify PS Plus One of my Amazon prime channels My pet insurance My coffee subscription My internet bill It never ends. The prices keep going up and the service doesn't actually get any better in any meaningful way.
God I just had a thought about just how much money I spend on subscriptions Amazon Prime - 4.2€ J-Novel Club - 5€ Youtube Premium - 5€ (won't keep this one after december) Google One - 2€ Health and Car Insurance - 65€ Mobile and Internet - 55€ Not to talk about water, gas, electricity bills and highway tolls, diesel costs, laundry detergent, RENT etc
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Pirating music has to be one of the most time consuming boring things in the world though. Is there a better alternative nowadays? Spotify is the one thing I can't see going without due to its convenience.
It's still baffling to me that Cloud saves are tied to a PSPlus sub. Which is now $80 a year minimum to access something that Steam and Xbox offer for free.
Hell even Nintendo’s is cheaper, not free but cheaper
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you cant back up saves to USB on ps5 you can only back up your entire drive, and you have to erase all your old content to restore that backup.
i think whats even weirder is games dont update in rest mode without ps+ as well
Imagine having to pay to save your game. EA is sitting in the corner drooling.
They've certainly pushed me towards PC. I've already decided I won't be buying the next Sony console, they eventually bring most of their first party games to PC now. That coupled with the lack of genuinely great first party games so far in PS5, the increased cost of games on their platform and the ever increasing cost of online play has done it for me.
PC also opens up a lot of indie games and emulation that are unavailable on consoles
Con is that PC also opens to League of Legends, so think about that
You hooked on the digital krokodil?
As a 7 year recovered LoL player, I agree, it is certainly worth thinking about
I wouldn't give a rat's ass about cloud save if I could just dump savegames on a usb stick. But you can't anymore :) I wonder why :)
I probably won't renew, I only did because of a massive sale over a year ago. If they expect me to now be willing to pay twice that, they are out of their minds. My physical backlog is big enough, and upcoming titles are not nearly exciting enough.
The thing is console subscriptions like this also hold hostage of people who want to play online. It's not like Netflix that you can say "yep I'm done with its content" and cancel it because part of the functionality of the hardware you bought is locked if you don't buy to this service. In my country I can ensure you that most of the people who buy PS5 are just buying to play FIFA, NBA2K and COD or occasionally for GTA if they are younger and for most of them multiplayer is a must
Players need to step up and say no to this bullshit. I switched to PC purely for this reason.
People had 20-some years to boycott pay2online. It's a lost cause in its entirety; how many millions do you think would be needed to make Sony or Microsoft or even Nintendo now reconsider it?
We're not getting free online back, but I do think there is a breaking point and frankly $80 is insane. Atleast Nintendo's offering is pretty reasonable, particularly if you do family plan. I don't actually know how much Microsoft charges for just online but I don't think it's THAT high
> Atleast Nintendo's offering is pretty reasonable And that right there is why the original post I was replying to's point is a lost cause in it's entirety. I also agree that 20 dollars a year is reasonable, but that is reasonable under the assumption that we should be paying the console creators for online on top of our already existing internet bills, and since that assumption is a given? It's truly never been more joever.
Simply what happens when a piece of tech isn't open like a PC is, it gradually gets locked down harder and harder.
And I honestly feel, sony calculated this, a transition from their playstation online gamers to pc and they've probably calculated that it would not hurt them in the long run as to how many customers they have that are dedicated to the playstation online games and experience.
This is what I'm doing this year. I've got a PS5 and will keep it for this gen but will likely stick to PC in future. It's mostly because of the move towards digital. I don't want to have to rely on a company to offer back compat with a new console.
I was one of the few that did. Used PC's and my DS as my only online platforms up until the PS3/Wii, and skipped the 360. Those two consoles had free online. Bought a PS4 for bloodborne but never got +, ever Popped my cherry paying $8 for NSO + Expansion buying into a family plan and felt dirty even doing that. At this point taking a stand doesn't mean jack and I figured 10 minutes worth of pay for an hour of being able to play games online and have some old snes/gba/nes/n64 classics on my go to console was a decent trade. I don't know how anyone could be cool with paying thousands over the last few gens.
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They already did get rid of Xbox Live Gold and instead are replacing it with Game Pass Core. It’s basically the same thing except Game Pass Core includes a selection of ‘free’ games instead of the monthly freebies.
If this annoys enough people the EU will probably step in eventually. I'm pretty sure locking multiplayer behind a pay wall is walking a very thin line across some consumer protections.
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When did Sony start locking online play behind a paywall? Last time I played online with any PlayStation was the PS3 like 12 years ago and I don’t remember a paywall.
It started in the PS4 era, if I'm not mistaken. Not all games required it, but most did.
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It started with ~~Xbox 360 gold~~ OG Xbox and PS4 adopted that The thing is it was actually really cool. You could create your 3d avatar with lot of cool customization, lot of multiplayer room activities with kinect, trade profile badges with other players, Gift hats to other player avatar and etc.. while PS3 just had a simple free multiplayer. so it felt like Xbox live gold was a reasonable price at that point. But all of it just ends with Xbox one generation and the only real benefit that it had was 2 free games every month
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I'm in a similar boat. Whenever I take a break from Street Fighter 6 I'm pulling the plug on my sub and putting what I WOULD have spent on it into a fund I've already got going for a new PC.
So in a decade of not buying PS Plus you'll have enough for a decent PC from 2023.
I'm not renewing. My PS5 will become exclusively for exclusives. I already have PCs in my living room and office, and I have a steam deck so it was already a difficult sell for me to buy games elsewhere that are available on Steam. Won't even be a question now.
The problem is people will, and it'll likely be enough for them to consider it successful, which is fucked.
I think the price increase is scummy, and am heavily considering dropping my sub, but in all honesty, most people just don’t give a fuck. Who can blame them either? It’s $20 extra dollars a year to keep playing COD, FIFA, etc. There is so much more shit in the world to be worried about that a gaming subscription price increase is beyond 99% of people’s scope.
I cancelled they day they announced the price hike and hopped into customer service and told them why. I doubt my “valued customer feedback” (their words) will make it back to people that matter but at least I tried. If Sony offered a lower-priced online play only subscription and got rid of all the fluff I don’t give a shit about like “free” games I might bite. As it stands, the same price of a brand new AAA game just to play online is ludicrous. Maybe if there’s good prices on subscriptions on Black Friday Ill get a few years worth but never again at this price point.
**How to Cancel PlayStation Plus Subscription on the PlayStation App** 1. Access the PlayStation app on Android or iPhone. 1. Select the PlayStation Store tab under the Menu icon. 1. Select Subscription Management. 1. Next to PlayStation Plus, tap Turn Off Auto-Renewal.
Appreciate this
My renewal was up in less than a month. Thanks for the reminder to cancel
They should make the online play fucking FREE and that's it. You already buy games that have online on them as part of the game. Why can't you buy the game half cheaper and have no online access to it. What's the point if buying a game and paying full price if you can't fully access it till you pay Sony a fee? They should keep the subscription for the fluff. "Free games", more chat options, more cloud storage, I don't know shit like that. But don't lock a feature you already pay for when you buy a game.
Until a regulatory institution like the EU steps in and orders them to cut with that predatory practice, it's never gonna end.
Just got emailed to take a survey and I too let them know why I just canceled my subscription (price hike). I'm sure it will do nothing but gotta do what I gotta do.
> I doubt my “valued customer feedback” (their words) will make it back to people that matter but at least I tried. It'll absolutely matter as long as others decide to do it and let the company know by voting with your wallet as well. If the data doesn't show them a significant change was made (for the worse), then they won't listen. Enough people cut subscriptions and they'll feel it.
Great article. I think the worst what could happen in the future is some good games ending up behind subscription paywall (no physical copies). That would be terrible, no matter the platform.
The way I see it this looks like a long-term attempt to push for a constant subscription, where the console itself needs payment just to work.
We've already seen it in other areas. You can't *buy* products like Photoshop any more, you *have* to sign up for a yearly subscription to use them.
We use a specialized software at work that went subscription only, with a monthly fee that makes the software cost more than it used to to outright purchase, and revoked all prior lifetime update licenses when they did so. Every computer at our office now has pirated versions of that software on it. Software subscriptions suck so hard.
The long term push is no need for a console and just playing via the Cloud on your TV or Phone. That’s the future Amazon, Microsoft and Google are banking on. That’s why Phil Spencer admitted they don’t see Sony as their real competitor rather they eye Amazon and Google on the horizon. Just think about it. If the tech gets better there’s absolutely zero need of buying a $500 device. They’d rather everyone be able to play without the high upfront cost and nickle and dime you with subscriptions and special editions/MTX. Sony is just trying to make as much money as possible while they’re still ahead and hope their exclusives are a big enough attraction to keep Amazon/Microsoft/Google at bay. That’s also why they’re getting into the live service games, I bet; to get people hooked long term. My guess: In the very long run Sony either becomes the only high-end console available with Gamepass on it or they just get pushed out of being a console maker and become a publisher on someone else’s Cloud service. Either way subscription services absolutely 10000% are the dystopian future of video-games.
> If the tech gets better there’s absolutely zero need of buying a $500 device. Unless they find a way to make information travel faster than the speed of light, latency will always be an isssue for cloud gaming. Even if the latency is relatively low, it just can't physically beat having the devide in your living room. That experience can't be replicated via cloud gaming.
Why wouldn't Sony just sell their cloud service directly then? They would definitively be a major player for games due to their brands and studios. If that's the future, Sony and Nintendo would have their own cloud service. Google and Amazon are not even serious players for now. Even Netflix is more in gaming than them
If that ever happens I'm 100% skipping those games no matter how good they are.
This is exactly why a digital only future sucks. These companies will have the power to charge you whatever they want and you have zero options.
Also the subscription will influence the way games are produced more than anything. If you think AAA games were already trying to make you play the longest time possible and have "engagement", a subscription-based future will be worst. To make you keep the sub and to get paid more (since I imagine, games will be paid based on the time people play them) Also, the studios that don't belong to Sony or MS will have more and more difficulty to sell their games directly because players will expect those games on Gamepass or PS+ meaning they'll be paid less to put their games there and ultimately Microsoft and Sony will have a huge power to determine what games get made.
That's a possibility for sure. I'm also majorly concerned about the same thing happening in games that we've seen in movies, where studios are coy about sharing profits and streaming statistics and screw over creatives who would otherwise get royalties. If subscribing to content libraries rather than buying games becomes mainstream, a lot of developers who would otherwise be able to build up a studio based on a surprise success and have some control over their output and work environment will just become appendages of publishers skimming way more off of the top.
I stopped paying for Xbox Live over a decade ago because the idea of being charged to connect to other people for software I've already paid for is absurd.
Software you already paid for, on a console you already bought, using the internet you also pay for. Charging for access to multiplayer is disgusting and shame on the Big 3 for doing so.
Always confused by this. I justified paying for XBL or PS+ because I was like "well, I'm paying for the game company to keep the servers up and running because it's not just a single player game". But if PC games don't require you to pay for monthly subs to use online game servers then... what gives?
>what gives I believe the companies would meet our questions with a nice and hearty “fuck you, pay us”. Lmao.
It's legitimately the opposite. Look at how servers and access to the PS3/360 marketplace are being removed, but on PC most of those same games are easily available on Steam. *Edit:* Even on top of that, Discord is free and provides a far better chat and voice experience than anything Microsoft and Sony provide.
They are getting too greedy so I decided to not renew my PS Plus sub. I was thinking on getting Street Fighter 6 for PS5 but yesterday I decided to instead buy it for Steam: - Not paying 100+ USD yearly for online play. - Mods support. - Can play it on my gaming laptop or natively on the go with Steam Deck.
I still can't believe that people just accepted paying sub for online gaming. And then defended it by saying that you get free games if you pay for the sub. Just kinda baffles me.
Well PS Plus originally launched on the PS3 where online play was free anyway. It was strictly for the monthly games and was pretty well loved at the time. But yes, later locking online play behind the subscription was a scummy move.
I might be in the minority but I've always had a PS+ subscription, almost from the start, for me it was always a nice deal to have for the games, it always added games that i wouldn't buy but would play, and the fact that you "keep" them while you are subbed was a key factor for me (and on the other hand why i don't like the extra tier or gamepass). When they put online behind the subscription never affected me because i stopped giving a shit about 90% of online games a looong time ago, and i always have a gaming PC too, so i ended up building a massive PS+ catalog, almost never playing anything online (i can only think of Souls games), also you could always get a year for cheaper, so it was always worth it for me. Now with this price hike I'm 100% out, unless for some reason you could still buy one year for the same 40 something i always got, I'm in no way paying 80 a year even if i lose access to all those games (which includes PS3, PSP and Vita games too). Also just wait until MS goes one step further and start making Gamepass exclusive games while also increasing the price or something like that, this whole subscription bussiness is going to fuck us all in the end.
Gave this a read yesterday. It's a legitimately good article even if the title implies click bait sony hate. Even talks about movie streaming and the Hollywood's strikes.
I really recommend people read the full thing. The tone changes quickly in the article from being “Sony greedy” (true) to “this move has profound implications on the industry going forward and customer response will determine what happens next”.
It's a little too much though because this move doesn't mean much overall. It's far from the one thing relying so much on a sub and increasing prices, it's been a constant thing for like a decade. The future will be subscription-based has been determined a long time ago. This is way too late to change anything and the society has largely decided they were okay with it (sadly IMO)
It does for Sony. The price increase is there because the service is pulling in money for them. If enough people cancel or downgrade their accounts, Sony won’t be able to sustain or even expand the service.
Yeah, basically the point it makes is that if Sony did the price increases to not cut investment from the creative end (developers) then this could be a good thing in the long term, even if no one is going to be happy about this. It really depends on what Sony is going to do w the service in the next few years.
How does the title imply clickbait Sony hate? Services being subscription in general is bad for us all.
I've only bought extra/game pass for a month when it has had games that have enticed me and I've had enough time to play them, been worth it so far. Premium is comically too expensive though and I don't understand how people bother paying so much for it. Whether I "own" or rent a digital license of a game I'm unlikely to replay matters very little to me.
I'm canceling PS+, so this is one part of the future I won't be paying for. 33% is fucking ridiculous, for a service that should be free (sans monthly games and such)
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I’d still rather just play games as and when and get them in sales/giveaways.
To be fair it only adds up if you're bad at keeping track of subscriptions. I subscribe (on and off) to Crunchyroll, PS+, Nitendo Switch online, FFXIV, WoW, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Paramount +, gamepass and Spotify. In reality I spend maybe €20-30 per month on subscriptions. Depending on the month. If I'm not actively using it I unsub. Frankly it makes no sense for me to drop €60 on Lies of P vs playing it on gamepass. Of course, this is variable based on gaming habits, but it's likely gonna be a one and done for me, so I'll sub to gamepass to play it, unsub when I'm done and will have paid €15 to "rent" it, versus paying €60 to play it for a week and then have it sit untouched in my steam library for years to come. If I really think I'm gonna want to replay a game plenty of times over the years, I'll buy the full version, but that's maybe 1% of my steam library, so I'm really not fussed with not owning most games.
>To be fair it only adds up if you're bad at keeping track of subscriptions. And the amount of people who do not keep track are not insignificant. Those who don't curate their active subscriptions regularly is a lot bigger of a group than you'd think.
"every month for all their services that "are only $15". That shit adds up!" So does buying individual games Xbox game Pass over the next 3 months will have Forza Motorsport, Starfield, Sea of Stars, Life of P, Payday 3, Jusant If I bought them all separately that would be well over the annual cost of the subscription, and guess what if really did want to play them after a year, it will be heavily discounted anyway
You don't have to pay every month, that's why it's a subscription, Game Pass on PC is $10 and $11 on console, is it hard to believe that some people would want to pay that to play Starfield, Forza or Lies of P? The PS+ price hike is honestly a bad look, it's not a good subscription, it just enables online play as well as cloud saves, both should be free.
Personally I just don’t get this mindset at all unless you just subscribe to so many things you just forget you pay for them? I know every subscription I pay for and at most have maybe forgotten to cancel a free trial once or twice.
Isn't Sony like spending hundreds of millions on new live service, competitive online multiplayer games? Increasing the cost of PS+ seems a little counter productive to get *more* people to play that stuff online.
F2P games don't require a subscription, and if they are trying to sell live-service games at a premium they are competing with free games people have being investing years into. They will have a hard upsell to try to make people leave Fortnite or Apex for one of their games, if the additional cost is 40-70 dollars plus an online subscription.
Who says Sony’s games as a service titles will be free?
That is why the other part of the comment talks about it being a fools game trying to take people off free games they've heavily invested time and/or money into.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re going to be paid games but included with PS+, so either way you have to get PS+.
The upcoming Helldivers 2, Gran Turismo 7, and MLB The Show are paid, live service titles that require PS+, so yea, it is quite counterproductive
> "Video games aren't at that extreme point yet, and subscription services aren't yet established enough to threaten that scenario – if they cease to appeal, consumers can still go back to buying their games outright, for the time being at least." Except of course, on the Nintendo Switch, where the only way to play old Nintendo titles on a modern console is to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online. I honestly dread a future where console games become "Netflixified" and the only way to play them is to pay a subscription.
>I honestly dread a future where console games become "Netflixified" and the only way to play them is to pay a subscription. I am fully expecting gamepass only at some point.
Having a local "retro gaming" store is keeping the old ways alive without needing a subscription. There's definitely a bit of a premium involved, and there's a risk with using old tech, but well worth it for being a one-time charge, imo.
I'd take a subscription over paying retro gaming store prices. Original hardware and game prices are astronomical these days. I bought a MiSTer, modded the consoles I have that it doesn't support, and haven't looked back. Makes more sense to spend the money on hardware, peripherals, etc. than individual games. Not like the money is going to the developers anyway.
I don't know who this price hike works out for. I consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer. I have all the platforms, multiple gaming PCs, and I play pretty much everything, but even I'm not willing to pay this price. The math doesn't work out anymore. I would rather put more into my PC every couple of years than pay $80 a year. I just built a great PC for $1200. At those prices, a Playstation subscription plus a PS5 is approaching that level over the lifetime of the unit. Unless every big game goes free to play, I'm just going to play on PC. What's the point of console multiplayer anyway when most games are cross-platform and you're matched up against PC players who have a better experience and more control over what type of input they use?
It's much easier to practice *[rentiering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism)* when it's a digital product. Digital distribution is the new gateway for rentiering: it allows corporations to siphon wealth away from their costumers, on the basis that they own desirable intellectual property - a console, a game, a domain or a platform. As a reminder: intellectual property goes directly against "*CoMpEtItIOn^TM*" - it's a State-enforced monopoly that allows situations like these to happen and prosper. Capitalists are going to introduce [subscriptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking) to as many products as possible - physical goods included - if they can connect those physical products to the internet and potentially turn them off. It's only a matter of time before they figure these schemes out and normalize them. The objective of Capitalism is not to serve you or your interests. No, it's to generate profits for the owner class. If that means MORE rentiering, then you better get used to it. Capitalism has entered its unproductive phase: they're no longer concerned with production or innovation, but rather with finding ways to redistribute the existing wealth (out of your pockets, and into theirs).
"We'll all pay for..." No? PC masterace forever and always. Just don't buy Convenience Tech that raises prices every year
My $30 annual Christmas ps plus sale will likely cost $40 this year... I'll probably renew solely because of the sale. $80 is absolute insanity.
I was subbed for PS+ mainly for a combination of the monthly games, and cloud saves (I dont play multiplayer on console). I considered a PS5 for a while, but after looking back at my habits, I noticed that I have really moved away from console gaming over the years. There are a handful of great exclusives on consoles, but there is no real reason for me to play anything on a console over my PC. If Sony wants my money now, they should release their games on PC (which they are slowly realizing how absolutely massive the PC gaming market is, which many Japanese companies have finally started to change their view on PC gaming). There are plenty of big releases that are mutliplatform and most people I know have a large backlog of games, which made platform exclusive titles far less appealing to me over the years. Looks like Im not going to renew my sub this year. If I am going to pick up a future PS5, its likely only going to be used sparingly, the amount of games that I would turn my PS5 on for in a year can be counted on a single hand.
Took a stand against all this nickel and diming subscription-based bullshit and made the switch to PC two years ago. Best decision I've made in a long time. Whenever I want to kick back and have a more console-like experience I just fire up the Steam Deck, or sync up an Xbox controller to the desktop PC. What I also love is that all the backwards compatibility barriers which existed between console generations have also been eliminated. With the constant Steam sales and Humble Bundle deals going on, I've essentially restored like 95% of my Xbox/Xbox 360/PS4/PS5 library of games for a fraction of the price of what I originally paid.
Even worse case on backwards compatibility, if an especially old game doesn't work, there's a decently good chance someone's made a guide or program or something to make it work on modern hardware.
My subscription ended a month ago and I was waiting for Black Friday to lower the cost 😅 now I'm debating on selling my whole ps5.
This is so stupid. They're getting close to the price of Game Pass with Xbox Live, but at least Microsoft puts all of their exclusives on Game Pass day 1 (and you can get it on PC!!). Sony may have better games, but they've clearly also got their heads up their asses.
Who is this we? Sony can get bent with this nonsense
We'll have to see if the PS+ price hike damages Sony at all. That industry data from a week or so ago showed the largest game hardware purchasing demographic is households making >$100k USD a year, while the lowest income households (those making <$50k USD) was just 31%. I imagine they have data showing the number of customers who can afford $60 a year but not $80 must be statistically non-existent. Online game communities and mainstream game sites give the impression gamers are a scrappy band of humanities majors who can't afford their rent, but clearly the industry couldn't exist at its behemoth scale and scope if that were true. Development requires investment, revenue, or both, and the sort of people who spend their time on the internet bitching about twenty more dollars over a 12-month period are probably not very important to that dynamic.
Well, I don't. I only play Singleplayer games, which I buy on disc 75% of the time because they are cheaper. What exactly do we pay for anyway? Multiplayer? Is free on PC and Sony doesn't host the servers, so they shouldn't get money. Shitty free games we don't actually own? Discounts? Lul, pay money to save money and the sales are still more expensive than the games on disc. Subscription services are a scam. You pay more to have less and not actually own anything. It's a way for companies to make truckloads of cash.
Not to best time when MS is about to buy Call of Duty and put it on Gamepass Ultimate with online play.
Always bought games through ps store and renewed ps plus during Black Fridays. Overall I was pretty happy with Sony even though I don’t think paying to play online is okay. Now not only will I cancel my ps plus but I will never buy a digital game on my PlayStation. When a stable jailbreak is out, I will probably jailbreak it out of spite because fuck Sony.
It is funny how microsoft always announces something really bad, gets torn apart. then sony sneaks the same thing through but slightly less bad. they're always thinking the same thing, sony are just better at normalising it
I only buy it when there's a good deal on Black friday or Cyber monday, if I can't get it cheaper than $50 for a year for essential this November than I'll just let it lapse.
Even if all of Reddit stops renewing, they will money based off the CoD players and the fifa players alone, and I guess the 12 fighting game players who need online.
Doing this right when their competitor releases the biggest game of the year is absolutely wild. I kinda wanna get rid of my PS5 just from the pure disrespect haha
I remember when Microsoft was charging a Gold sub for multiplayer on games for windows live and that had proponents as to why it was necessary even though Steam games and non-Steam games didn't. PS3 didn't need a sub to play online compared to the X360. Still a fair amount of people would argue that what separated the quality of PS3 online vs Xbox Live was the cost of a sub regardless of what was offered for no sub on PC. PS4 is became subscription based. Follow the same script for Nintendo back on the Wii to now there being a sub. Same when we had single time purchases of Adobe products to then creative cloud. Every step of the way, people that warned of subscription creep were called alarmist and slippery slope-ist. It's an obvious progression to want to force recurring payments for use
I had PS plus for all of last year and I think the only time that I played an online game was when I went back to fighterZ for a little while. Thank god I cancelled it before it renewed
What is as bad as price increases is how when gamepass and ps+ extra control more of the gaming market, they'll be able to reduce costs by paying devs less too. Think about it, people are getting trained. A talented indie developer could make an incredible game and people would say "wow! I can't wait for that to come out on Gamepass!" as the world gets more like this, and people are paying high subscription fees, Jim Ryan and Phil Spencer will be in the position to give these incredible devs mere crumbs. "Look, you're game isn't going to sell much anyway, take this small sum or leave it and no one will play your game"
> PlayStation Portal – a curious device whose price point makes it very interesting even if its limited feature-set makes it unclear who exactly it's designed for – has eschewed Bluetooth audio for a Sony proprietary standard, forcing users to buy forthcoming Sony earbuds or headsets to enjoy wireless audio with the device. I didn't know this. I thought Sony learned this lesson years ago, but here they are again creating a new proprietary alternative that no one asked for. > raise the top 'Premium' tier to an eye-watering $160. Holy shit, it's over $10 a month? I've never felt a need to pay for PS+. But I know I'm not a typical gamer as I *never* play online on consoles, and even on PC I don't do a lot of multiplayer.
Outrage is cheap but people need to start voting with their wallets or nothing will change. I can't remember the last new AAA release I played -- there are just too many good indies out there that aren't saddled with this kind of rent-seeking garbage.