To put that another way, I've never owned a PS3 before, and I'm strongly thinking about buying one. The thing is, I'm not entirely sure how PS+ works, and I'd like to know what games I'd be able to play with my purchase.

I know the games are different according to region--I'm in the US, btw--and I think that even as games are removed from the service, you get to keep playing them as long as you remain a subscriber. The problem is that I don't know what games have been removed.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=602666

The second post in that thread is an incredible list, but the games listed on the official site seems much more limited:

http://us.playstation.com/psn/playstation_plus/

I don't know if the PS.com list just shows some of the latest titles, or if that's really everything that is currently available at the moment for new subscribers, so I thought I'd ask here. Is there somewhere with a definitive list?

Having missed out on many PS3 exclusives this generation, I'd love a chance to play a huge selection of those titles. If it's just going to be 12 games to start with, I don't think that would be worth spending $300 on another console, when the PS4 is right around the corner.

@spaceinsomniac: The 12 PS3 titles and 6 Vita titles shown on the Playstation website are the only ones that you can currently add to your account for free through Playstation Plus.

The Neogaf thread shows a longer list of "PS+ games of the last year", most of which have rotated out but were at one time free. The games are not auto-added to your account while you pay for Playstation Plus, so if you don't go into the store and "claim" a game while it is free and go through a checkout process where you pay zero dollars, it never gets added to your account, and eventually that game isn't being offered anymore. The length varies from game to game.

If you decide to sign up for PS+, you basically need to check about once a month to see if they've rotated in anything new. Occasionally they do really brief periods of freeness (Borderlands 1 was free for like the 2 weeks leading up to Borderlands 2, I think, as a weird promotional thing), but most freeness tends to last a month or more.

These are in the US currently + this weeks: VLR

+ a few discounts each week.

Deus Ex will be gone with the next store update.

You can keep playing them until your sub runs out. (the licence expires on the day your sub would expire, if you have it set to not automatically renew, you have to redownload at that date) If you resub you have access to everything you at least hit download on. I always just hit download on everything, wait until it wants to start then mash circle to back out. Then it adds it to my account but doesn't actually download if I don't want to right now.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/tag/playstation-plus/

@bisonhero: @sogeman:

Thank you both. If it's just 12 games to start, I really don't know if that's worth 100 dollars shy of the price of the PS4, especially when I already have one pre-ordered. Always wanted to play Uncharted, but I sure wouldn't want to start with the 3rd in the series.

Maybe I'll just wait for Sony's PS3 game streaming service on PS4. Why did console prices this generation stay so damn high for so long!? It's a bit ridiculous.