Sony is in an interesting position with thePS5right now. It’s still trying to catch up with Microsoft’s marketing agenda, which seems to be paying off handsomely for the Xbox Series X (in terms of mindshare), but it’s also taking the necessary precautionary steps in fully revealing thePS5as well, such as waiting for Microsoft to make the first move on pricing. With Microsoft on a roll with its continuous reveal of the Xbox Series X and competition between the two heating up, Sony might have to make some significant changes to its existing premium services - PS Plus and PS Now - to entice more consumers.
With thePS5 reportedly costing Sony around $450per unit manufactured (excluding packaging and retailing fees), the PS5 could potentially cost anywhere from $450 to $600 at launch. While Sony will most assuredly pack-in either a week or month’s worth of PS Plus or PS Now with each new console, the current prices of either subscription plan, in addition to new launch games being purchased, will end up costing the consumer upwards of $700, which is not a pretty number. With all that in mind, the first thing Sony can do to alleviate that intense price is to reconfigure the way PS Plus and PS Now work.
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PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now Subscriptions on PS5
As they stand, both PS Plus and PS Now subscriptions cost $60 per year (equivalent to $5 per month), $25 every three months (equivalent to $8.33 per month), or a flat $10 per month. While Microsoft offers a substantial amount ofperks for its ultimate Xbox Game Pass subscription, it’s ultimate price is still $15 per month or $180 per year (there’s a reason Microsoft only advertises the monthly value), so it’s not like Sony has to reinvent its entire pricing model; it simply has to shift a few things around in order to make its services line up with the value of Xbox’s.
Free Monthly PS Plus Games on PS5
Sony could theoretically still allow PS Plus andPS Nowto exist independently of each other on PS5, even if a consolidated plan exists, mainly to allow those who simply want to play multiplayer online without paying a higher price the ability to do so. But there are some redundancies in the way these two services work.
PS Plus offers a couple of free games every month and gives access to multiplayer online in addition to a few other perks such as 100GB of cloud storage, extra discounts on games, and Share Play. Similarly, a PS Now subscription allows access to a rolling catalog of over 800PS2, PS3, and PS4 games(all of which are streamable, while only PS4 games are downloadable) and it comes with access to multiplayer online for those games as well. This begs the question: why should both services exist when they offer similar features?
If fans ofPS Plus just want free gamesevery month and access to multiplayer, they can get them with PS Now for the same price so it’s peculiar to offer these services side-by-side. Hypothetically, if Sony put all of both services’ perks together for a consolidated plan instead of adding games to either service over and over, it would allow it to primarily focus on making PS Now’s catalog competitive with Xbox Game Pass (especially since PS Plus’ monthly games have been inconsistent in quality over the years). This hypothetical combined service would also be great for filling in the presumably slow first few years of the PS5.
