Sony is sticking to its guns, and won’t be releasing its first party games day one on its PlayStation Plus subscription service.
Speaking with GameFile, vice president of global services at PlayStation Nick Maguire said the company was “not looking to put games in day and date” on PS Plus, and will instead stick with its current way of doing things.
This is, of course, very different from Xbox, which often puts big first party releases such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and many more on Game Pass from the get go.
Sony, meanwhile, has added some third party games like the excellent Blue Prince and Stray to PS Plus on the same day as their initial launch. But the likes of God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Forbidden West – both from Sony’s first party studios – weren’t added to the service until around a year after their initial release.
“Our strategy of finding four or five independent day-and-date titles – and using that to complement our strategy of bringing games in when they’re 12, 18 months old or older – that balance for us is working really well across the platform,” Maguire continued, before adding:
“If there were six or seven great opportunities, then we would go for them as well.”
When asked if the company had considered the benefit of putting its own first party live-service titles on PS Plus, with Concord – the debut game from Sony’s FireWalk Studios, which was taken offline just two weeks after its PS5 and PC debut – being used as an example, Maguire declined to give a specific comment. The Sony exec did say, however, that PS Plus has “proven itself to be a great way to introduce new players to franchises” when they arrive on the service.
“There’s always going to be a moment for any game where there’s the right time for it to go into Plus, when it’s ready to reach a wider audience or… to find new fans or new parts of our platform that it hasn’t already reached,” Maguire said.
This month, Remedy’s multiplayer Control spin-off FBC: Firebreak was available to all those on PlayStation Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers day one. However, even when included on a subscription service, some live-service games still flop. Square Enix’s Foamstars, for example, failed to set the world alight despite being part of the PS Plus catalogue.
Today’s comments echo what the exec stated back in 2023, when Maguire said putting games on to Sony’s subscription service “a bit later in the life cycle” is working for the company. Therefore, this will “continue to be [its] strategy moving forward,” Maguire said at the time.
Earlier this month, meanwhile, Sony president Hideaki Nishino stated the company is open to adjusting the price of PlayStation Plus in the future, as it aims to “maximise profitability”.