Was Sony right to resist adding PS5 exclusives to day one of PS Plus?

Despite the question marks over its profitability, Microsoft repeatedly assured journalists and consumers that its business model was solid and not supported by the obscene wealth of its parent company. This despite the fact that it switched to a financial reporting strategy that obscured the true nature of its numbers and focused on revenues rather than hard profits.

Image: Push Square

PlayStation, when pressed, said its strategy simply wasn’t “sustainable” – a statement it would repeat several times. “We’re not going to go down the path of putting new titles in a subscription model,” then-boss Jim Ryan told Games Industry.biz. “These games cost millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop. We just don’t see that as sustainable.”

He was of course accused of being a profit-seeking liar, and that was another arrow in the quiver of Ryan’s biggest detractors, many of whom felt he was unfit to lead PlayStation, despite his unprecedented business success.

Sony has reinvented its subscription offering by PS Plus of PS Now to create a more compelling trio of tiers that encompassed a wider selection of PS5 and PS4 games. And it would later experiment with adding smaller, day-one titles to its offering, such as Tchia, Humanity, and more recently Animal Well. While there are still question marks over the more expensive PS Plus Premiumthe value of PS Plus Extra has been largely welcomed.

Discussion Topic: Was Sony Right to Refuse to Add PS5 Exclusives to PS Plus on Day One? 3 — *Image: Push Square*

Still, the experiment has proven to be a success for PlayStation’s profits, with Sony able to squeeze more revenue from each individual subscriber on average, but the total number of PS Plus members has remained flat overall – just under 50 million. Despite this, consumer spending on gaming subscriptions has hit a wall in the United States specifically, with year-over-year growth of just 1 percent in some months of the year.

All of this resulted in some seismic shifts in Microsoft’s business model overnight: including the introduction of a Game Pass tier that no longer includes first-party releases. Starting in September, there will be a new subscription plan called Game Pass Standard to delete the promise of day one games – despite still charging a hefty $14.99 per month.

The Redmond company isn’t doing away with the concept entirely, but those hoping to play titles like Fable and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at launch will now have to pay $19.99 per month to do so. PC Game Pass maintains the promise of day-one games, though the price also increases from $9.99 to $11.99.

That means if you count the recently renamed Game Pass Core, there’s now two Microsoft subscription offers that don’t deliver on the promise of “play it from day one with Game Pass.” Of course, it’s true that all Subscriptions – including Sony’s own PS Plus – have risen in price of late, but this is a tacit admission from Microsoft that the model isn’t working as well as previously suggested.

In fact, this sudden shift retroactively suggests that Sony – and yes, Jim Ryan – may have been right all along: the model isn’t sustainable after all. Since games tend to be longer and require a more active attention span than movies and music, the dream of a “Netflix for games” is fading fast.

Do you think Sony was right to refuse to add its first-party games to PS Plus on day one? Do you still think this is a business model the platform holder should explore, or is Microsoft starting to show that it’s not sustainable? Let us know in the comments below.

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