Schreier Reports Playstation Plus and Now will merge this spring to compete with Game Pass

When it launches, expected in the spring, the service will merge Sony’s two existing subscription plans, PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now. Currently, PlayStation Plus is required for most online multiplayer games and offers free monthly titles, while PlayStation Now allows users to stream or download older games. Documents reviewed by Bloomberg suggest that Sony plans to retain the PlayStation Plus branding but phase out PlayStation Now.

Helpful bullet points lifted from a Reddit thread for the TL;DR crowd:

• available on PS4/5, expected this Spring
• will merge PS+ and Now
• Tier 1: PS+ benefits
• Tier 2: access to PS4 and select PS5 games
• Tier 3: access to classic library
• Sony is also investing more heavily into cloud gaming

While light on any specifics, it's nice to know there's officially some kind of movement on the Sony side so we can see what some other company thinks is a competitive counterweight to Game Pass.

Weirdly, though, it seems like Sony is going to play this the way they've played a lot of their PS5 countermeasures - half-cocked and full of We're #1-esque swagger rather than a full bore opposition. Without any details to go off of, the vagaries here sound like...they're just going to try to convince you to add PSNow to your PS+ subscription without substantially changing what that would mean in any way other than branding? I'm sure that can't be all there is to it, but I wrote about what PS Now already looks like back in April and it, like, is totally just what Tier 2 and 3 are in a single package. I was downloading full PS4 games and enjoying as much of them as I wanted before uninstalling and moving on.

I can't imagine they'd expect people to be so dull as to think that's all they have to do to get PS Now's catalog into more homes, but without any indication that they're even considering the first party offer that Microsoft so generously includes in their subscription service, what would it take for this sort of offering to make any sense? Both services are $5-$10 per month depending on your subscription plan, meaning you'd have to assume Sony is looking to charge the same rate as Game Pass for an offering that is heavily backwards looking rather than Microsoft's more future oriented service. Does that sound right?

This thread probably won't merit much discussion right now considering the scant details but if Schreier's got a Bloomberg write-up about it I have to imagine we'll be hearing more pretty soon - hopefully with some unique tricks up their sleeve!

I have to imagine this is more than just combining PS+ and PSNow because you can already do that. If they make an effort to make more classic games available than currently are that could add value. You say they're not providing as much value as Microsoft, but they're also competing with Nintendo and Nintendo's offerings are entirely backward looking. Sony has a massive catalog of classic games it can draw on.

We also don't know whether Sony plans to offer some first party games either at launch or slightly after on the service.

If it's literally just PSNOW and PS Plus then this is a purely administrative change. But there are lots of things they could do to make it more than that, and if they're smart they will. Game Pass has a lot of momentum and Microsoft has by far the deepest pockets of any major player in gaming. Sony is still in the industry leading position but so was Blockbuster video and we all know what happened there, and that was with Netflix still as a semi-startup.

I'm not saying that Microsoft is Netflix and Sony is Blockbuster. Gaming is a different industry and the company's are positioned differently (Blockbuster had a ton of money invested in brick and mortar stores that became an albatross when mail order and then streaming took off) but this is not the same Microsoft that launched the Zune and if streaming is the future then there is no company better positioned to do it than Microsoft. If Sony wants to make this bet it would be wise to bring more to the table than a rebrand, because PSNOW clearly isn't appealing to people now, and calling it PS+++ won't make it any better.

Glass half full is that it's a step in the right direction for Sony, since they've been way behind Microsoft on this kind of stuff.

Glass half empty - like you said, it seems kind if half-assed. I suppose I'd need to know more specifics about what they mean when they say "select PS5 games" to judge, but it seems to imply a lesser offering than what Microsoft offers. I mean, it still blows my mind that Halo just going to be on Game Pass next week. Halo, the big, massive, tentpole franchise that pretty much made Xbox is just going to be . . . released . . . on a $10/month service. And that's before you get into the massive EA and Bethesda libraries not to mention all the smaller indie games.

The only way Sony can really compete with that would be if they start releasing all of their big prestige first party games on this new service, but somehow I just don't see them releasing things like Horizon and God of War and Gran Turismo on the service on day one. Maybe they'll surprise me, but I doubt it.

I also kind of suspicious of this "Tier" system they seem to have going on. While not super-hard to wrap your head around, it also seems needlessly complicated. The only decision you really need to make with Game Pass is whether you go yearly or month-to-month, but it's the same service either way. Sony's approach makes me think there's going to be a huge markup on the top tier service, which is probably where they'll stick everything worth playing (i.e. Play Horizon Day 1 - but only if you are at the $X/month tier).

@therealturk: Game Pass offers a PC version, a normal version, and an Ultimate version that includes Gold. So it's not true to say it has no tiers.

I'd be shocked if this thing truly competes with Game Pass. I can't imagine that it'll be priced competitively, that they'll be able to spend as much as Microsoft does to fill that library any better than they do with PS Now, or that they are willing to put their $70 first party games on there at launch.

PS+ isn’t as good as it used to be before PS4 completely demolished Xbox One and Sony got their old ”confidence” back. I would appreciate a renewed focus on the plan, but this may be more of a friendlier way to get rid of Now than anything.

As a subscriber of both, this is good news. I'd imagine they will also combine the prices, so people will likely have to pay $100 a year for the full set of features. If it's cheaper, all the better. But if it's more expensive than that, It could be a problem. All Sony needs to do is make it so you can download all games on the service. Include a huge PS2 and PS1 library. Add to their current PS3 and PS4 library. And make a select number of PS5 games playable. It's really not that complicated, unless Sony chooses to make it so like Nintendo is doing with their online service.

That's... nice?

I literally pay for PS+ just to get cloud saves, so I've proven I'm happy to let Sony rip me off. Looking forward to them overcharging for access to their back catalog.

I just wanna play Einhander and Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven on my PS5. Is that too much to ask?

About time Sony made the change, but I'm wondering if having a 3 tiered system makes sense. Might make it a bit difficult to explain to the common consumer.

Jim Ryan has made it pretty clear he does not take the classic library seriously. Playstation will have to do some serious 180° moves to convince me they'll put the kind of effort into this that it needs. MS set a serious precedent and an insanely high bar to follow.

Im wondering how this will change PS+ and Now. Because right now Now already includes PS4/PS3/PS2 games but now they are supposedly adding PS1 and PSP. So these tiers make it sound like they are going to intentionally gut Now and bundle it with PS+, only to sell another version back again at a higher tier, and probably higher price. Are they just going to include streaming outside of Now with PS+ and offer a larger collection of games/installs at the higher tier? Bring back rentals? Include a larger selection of new releases?

Without a sale its $120 a year for both PS+ and Now combined Vs. the $180 for Ultimate. And im not saying PS+ and Now combined has as good of a selection as Gamepass, but they don't rotate out the majority of there games, once they are on there they typically stay there and has amassed a larger selection. But the downside has been the selection of new releases, which for $60 less was probably ok. And will this include the PC ports of recent firstparty games to compete with PC Gamepass? Probably not.

I honestly think if Sony and MS where smart they would launch emulators on PC and try and keep selling classic games there, but legal stuff im sure gets in the way. Also that's kind of a side rant.

@lego_my_eggo: I feel like I've never heard that emulator idea but it does sound oddly genius. Sony should totally be selling a PS1 that's nothing more than a decompiler (apologies if this word doesn't apply here, I'm a Mac and console guy who admittedly only thinks he knows what this word means hah) and ROM reader like PCSX is and use it as a storefront for their old games. Rather than complaining about emulation it's kind of impressive how none of these companies ever had an idea like this, but I suppose it's only been five or six years or so where companies so rooted in hardware have been so seriously considering all digital futures.

@nodima: Sega has basically done this emulator concept with their Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games on steam. The launcher is essentially a Genesis emulator with a nice UI and they offer about 50 Genesis games for purchase either individually or as a full bundle. They even have workshop support so you can easily upload or download ROM hacks for any of the games. As an extra bonus, the ROM file is DRM free and you can just extract it from the game folder and play it in an emulator of your choice if you don't like the official one.

@nodima:The issue is not the emulator. The emulator is easy for most games. The issue is licenses and ownership. Microsoft has a great 360 emulator for the Xbox Series X but can only sell a small selection of 360 games because of various licensing issues. Sony would run into the same issues. Sony already got a good PS1 emulator up and running on PS3 and sold a lot of PS1 games for that console and my guess is that the addition of PS1 games here will be the addition of some of those games running on the same PS3 server blades that run PS3 games for PSNOW. But it will be a smaller selection because Sony's licensing people were not forward thinking and they probably have to re-license basically every game.

Similarly the PS3 has a PS1 emulator built into its OS and can run almost any PS1 games (the original PS2 emulation is different because that was done through hardware) but they can't do that with modern consoles because modern consoles aren't built to play games off the disc. They copy them to the hard drive first, and legally there is an argument that that's piracy unless there's a specific license to do so.

All this stuff is much more restrained by licensing and ownership rights than technical issues. Getting these games running on the new hardware is easy for PS1 and PS2 (The PS2 games on PS4 run in an emulator so we know they can emulate PS2 games on PS4 well) but getting the rights to do so is much more difficult.

Interesting point on that note, some of the recent additions to Xbox backwards compatibility are disc only. As in, these are 360 games that will work on a Series X if you put your original disc in the drive, but there is no way to buy the game digitally. Not sure if the game is installed on the hard drive in order to play it, but clearly licensing issues preventing a game from being sold on digital storefronts are not a total impediment to backwards compatibility, unless there's something else going in here that I'm missing.

@ll_exile_ll: There are two potential reasons for this. The first is that the license holder(s) for whatever reason might consent to backwards compatibility but not additional sales. Why? Possibly because they want to sell a remastered copy down the road but don't think they'll sell many to people who already have copies so they are willing to let them play them, or for whatever other reason. I think this may happen sometimes but is not the most likely explanation.

So what is the most likely explanation? Sublicenses. License agreements can be written in many different ways, and it's quite possible to have a license agreement that permits the main license holder (the publisher of the game) to sell the game for any platform, but limits in time how long they can sell new copies. So for example maybe THQ and/or Vivendi licensed 50 Cent's likeness and music for Blood On the Sand, and got to sell new copies for 5 years, but had no other restrictions (in case they wanted to port the game to other platforms etc...) Whoever has the license now would own the rights to the game as a whole and could make it backwards compatible if they wanted, but couldn't sell additional new copies.

I'm speculating about the particulars here, but if you look at the games that are backwards compatible disc only they almost all have some kind of sublicensed material in them or are available as remasters.

There are also a number of games that were previously for sale on the Xbox Store and if you bought a copy when they were available you can still download it but they have been delisted so you can't get a new copy. The reasoning there is similar.

So yes the games are still installed to the hard drive, but in these cases the licensing doesn't prevent that, it just prevents new copies being sold (or it prevents any copies being sold digitally to begin with, that's also possible.)

I use Gamepass as a way to discover games to play and I suspect I'll use the new PS Plus service in much the same way. For me, it's not enough to watch somebody else play a game to help me decide if a game is worth playing. I have to try the game out myself.

And on a somewhat related note. Whatever happened to demos? Seems like there are fewer of them around for new games compared to 10 years ago. Hmmm. I guess the advent of Gamepass and other gaming services pretty much spelled the end of demos as a way to get gamers to notice the latest titles.

@berfunkle: I think they looked at the numbers and found out people where actually less likely to buy a game after playing a demo, and you need to dedicate resources, so they stopped putting them out. You still get them here and there on Steam for some of the gaming events, and MS are actually doing one soon, but they are usually for a limited time. I remember it being one of the selling points for PS Now was instant streamed demos, but that was when they where going out of fashion.

I'm only surprised it hasn't happened sooner. In addition to having to compete with Microsoft, I bet both Sony and third-party developers are anxious to get PS5 games in front of more people, and with hardware availability still so poor, everyone will just have to settle for streaming.

I had this whole thing thought out about how the current console can be called the "lost generation." Because of supply issues, the life span of the previous generation hardware is going to extend much longer than planned, and so developers are going to keep making cross-gen titles to maximize their audience. Because of that, games can't really take full advantage of the new and differentiating features that the current generation hardware brings, and instead settle for "more graphics".

huh. i guess that makes sense- it probably seems negligent to shareholders at some point if Sony DIDN'T step into the service space with a more robust offering. otherwise you're just leaving it to Microsoft to more firmly entrench their position.

that said a gaming sub still doesn't appeal to me that much. i just don't consume at a volume that justifies a recurring charge (i also just cancelled my netflix because i suddently realized hadn't watched practically anything in 2 years).

@antime: I don't think it's a lost generation, I just think we've hit the limits of how much hardware can impact design. Maybe the SSDs will prove to be a game changer in the long run but there are some Gen 9 only games already available and other than Dualsense gimmicks all they've got are shinier graphics and better load times.

Even when developers are given the go ahead to go Next Gen only they aren't moving the design ball forward. Maybe that will change in time but I don't think cross gen is the issue.

This could be the thing that makes me go all digital with Sony, anyway. There are a couple of things I need out of the tier I would be interested in paying for. As a given. If i am not given a license (the way the 360 games are permanent on xbox) for anything permanent then i'd rather just do my little one month trial and see which obscure games from the PS1 catalog are of interest to me.

• I need the option for Japanese or US versions of games.
  • Back in my burned disc days I played the hell out of the japanese versions of games. That may be why i don't really care about story. Just give me heart.
• Let me just do a PSP/Vita/Ps1/PS2 tier only
  • I have no interest in anything ps3 and beyond because i probably already own it on xbox. Ive owned all the systems and i think some of the titles for psp and vita would benefit greatly from dual analog and L2/R2. So if they go back and do the work on some of these titles I might very interested. See previous wish for japanese versions of games
• If you have a streaming service and you use a phone give me some benefit to getting an Xperia
  • I'm very cellphone agnostic right now. XCloud gives me pause just because there's no native support and stadia really is asking alot of me to buy in to their service so i wont
  • Let me install my games on my phone so i can get my vita 2.0 and i'll just get a clamp for a ps5 controller or xbox controller
  • Native streaming app
• Trophy support for ps1 and ps2 titles. I've seen it done with ape escape 2 (not a remaster) on psnow so clearly you have some vudu that microsoft doesn't since they couldnt do achievements with OG xbox games.
• Let me install and buy everything. Once you lock stuff behind streaming and online connection you can count me out. For once you can look at Nintendo's onlinle model for Switch online + expansion pack. They want to lock stuff behind a paywall. Question *Is that animal crossing dlc permanent once you buy a year or are they really going to make some kid pay every year to have their character wear a favorite hat. Is this when Resette makes his return. We can start calling him Paymeee