A reader is confused by Sony’s promotion of the revamped PS Plus and worries they’re not taking the Game Pass equivalent seriously.
No matter whether you’re a PlayStation or Xbox fan I think everyone would accept that Sony has a baseline of competence that is worthy of respect. They’ve been in the games business for a long time and whether you agree with their decisions or not they usually make them according to a predictable, internal logic. So what on earth is going on with the revamp of PS Plus?
The revamp (which doesn’t really have an overall name, making it difficult to talk about in general – mistake number one for Sony’s marketing) was talked about for months before the official announcement, with everyone describing it as the PlayStation equivalent to Game Pass, which it essentially is. Although, really, it’s PlayStation Extra, the middle of the three tiers that’s the most like Game Pass because while PS Plus Platinum is the most expensive it’s really just PS Extra + PS Now.
If you’re already confused then good, because that’s my point. This IS all horribly confusing. It’s all been presented in the most unhelpful way possible, both in terms of having it be easy to understand and making it seem like something people would want to spend money on. Worse than that, Sony’s presentation of the whole concept is beginning to seem outright incompetent, and that’s not what I would’ve expected from them.
It’s not like I work in marketing, far from it, but I would have thought the obvious way to go was to announce it during a State of Play and have a big massive montage (they finally did one the other day but it’s barely a few seconds long) of the games on PS Plus Extra and Platinum. That’d be two separate montages, ones for PlayStation 4 and 5 games for Extra and then older retro games for Platinum, to really get the nostalgia flowing.
Then just need to quickly explain the pricing before listing all the games that will be part of the two services. Maybe have them all scroll down on screen in a comically long list, just to make a point of how many there are of them. I mean that makes sense, right? That’s what you’d normally expect? And it’s not too expensive or in any way something that would be difficult to do.
So what did Sony actually do? They had a single blog with no pictures that they updated when they had more info – they didn’t even deem it worthwhile to have a separate article when they announced the prices. Is Sony’s marketing staff on holiday or something? Did they let the intern with no experience do this? Or are they so arrogant they don’t think it matters what they do, people will buy it anyway?
I genuinely don’t know the answer and think (hope) it’s not any of those. Although in almost every case like this the answer is simple incompetence, but then that just leads me back to my opening statement where I assumed Sony were better than that.
Why are they doing it this way? Why release such small lists of games when you know a sizeable portion of people are going to assume that’s all there is to the service? What possible good is there in keeping that information back when it’s the sole reason anyone is going to be paying for these things?
How do you not manage to mention any PlayStation 2 game at all? You know, games from the most successful home console ever made? I literally don’t understand it. Either Sony’s head of marketing is a secret double agent for Microsoft or Sony itself just doesn’t believe in the whole concept and resents having to copy Game Pass.
It’s no secret that Sony didn’t want to make its own version of Game Press and has basically been forced into it by the success of Xbox but making this half-assed copy that they can’t even mount the enthusiasm to promote properly is crazy. Especially as Sony has a major advantage over Microsoft, in that they have a much bigger and better retro line-up, that they should be able to easily leverage. Except, like I said, they couldn’t even be bothered to talk about PlayStation 2 games, let alone anything else.
I was just finishing this article off on Friday morning and then it happened again. Apparently, some of these older games have brand new trophy support, which is great news! But how do we know this? Because Bend Studio said so in a tweet, despite Sony never mentioning it themselves. What is going on at that company?!
It’s madness, they’re acting like some surly child being forced to do chores that it doesn’t want to, when it should be embracing what is very clearly the future of gaming, certainly in terms of how you pay for it. I’m sure people will say they’ll announce more in due to time but why? What was the benefit in making everyone think your service is worse than it is for several weeks? And how late are you going to leave it exactly, given it starts in Asia on Monday. Monday!
If Sony has a secret plan to make themselves and PS Plus Premium look sensible and reasonable at the end of all this then they are leaving it very late.
By reader Gopher
The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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