For the last few weeks, we have been looking at and dissecting PlayStation’s new PS Plus Premium service. It went online on June 13th and promised more than a sea of games for players to experience and re-experience. Unlike Microsoft’s Game Pass, which features ‘day one’ releases to play consistently, as well as access to a lot of newer titles (that go in and out of contractual obligation for GP), the PlayStation folks seemed to have gone a different route, with a sprinkle of the GP idea. Accessing a library of past games, providing access to proven current generation classics, and keeping new monthly releases flowing seemed more important to the PlayStation brand. Was it the right move? Only time will tell, but when you’re competing against a company that has the word ‘trillion’ in its value number versus ‘billions’, you’re not going to want to bet the entire bank on a singular idea. Plus, ‘day one’ releases may not be developer-friendly, especially to indies out there that are hoping for a big payday.
Anyway, let’s get right into this breakdown.
What is in premium
PS Plus Premium is broken down into several pieces. The pieces are broken down into PS Plus Collection access, game trials, classic catalogs, and cloud streaming access. While the former piece is included in PS Plus Extra, it is worth noting that it’s a big reason to jump into premium as well. With that, we’ll begin with the collection and monthly releases.
You get the same monthly game releases as you did with PS Plus. This means AAA titles that have some mileage behind them but are mostly good, and can be downloaded each month if you’re a member. Since the inception of this monthly PS Plus deal, it’s been a helluva ride for the most part with that option. This option also includes access to the PS Plus Collection and the big games that launched with this service, which include Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Ghost of Tsushima, and Death Stranding. Those are huge titles and will keep you occupied for many hours.
Game Trials is another big piece of this pie, as it’s an option that you get to try before you buy a game. This is a concept that the PC industry has laid down the foundation for since the 80s. I was never quite sure why the console industry didn’t pick up on this sooner, especially when CD-ROMs started to make an appearance. If my memory serves me correctly, there were demo discs distributed for the PlayStation 2 towards the end of its life, but all demos and trials were lost when the PS3 (and other consoles) emerged. Having a game trial available for people to play means that you support your product enough to trust it will sell the full game. This is a great addition to the overall premium package, though the first month has a limited amount of trial games to choose from, which will probably grow as the idea continues. One can hope it will grow.
The real value of PS Plus Premium for most people is the classics catalog section that features PS1, PS2, PSP, and PS3 games (streaming is the only option for PS3 now). At the current moment, if my math is correct, there are 393 games available in this category during the service’s first month. They’re not all gold, but you do have some gems in there that you can revisit. For example, while I know it wasn’t well-received, it was neat seeing Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (PS2) on that list, as well as The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. There are a lot of games in this section and the game list seems to be growing. Sticking with Monkey Island, it wasn’t in the initial launch, which bummed me out, but a day or two later it appeared in this section. It was a treat to play that game again. That game is worth the price of admission, but I’m a softy for old-school LucasArts/LucasFilm Games point-and-click titles.
Adding to all the above is the last big piece to the premium service which is Cloud Streaming. The CS concept is that you can avoid downloading a game and just straight-up stream it. It’s something that has been a big deal lately with multiple services (Luna, Game Pass, etc.) and PlayStation is trying it as well. On paper, much like communism, it’s a good idea. What happens when you execute it? Well, the concept has some bugs in its machine. We’ll get to that shortly. Just note that this is where the industry is going with its future gaming. At some point cloud streaming will be perfected, as much as it is now with movies on Netflix or wherever. It is a concept and technology that is in front of us.
Beyond those four big pieces, you get the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog, which is every game under the PS Plus moniker, you get access to the PS Plus Collection, a category that launched with the PlayStation 5 in 2019, and you get discounts, exclusive packs, and online access (as well as sharing games with friends). It’s a nice package at launch, though the biggest reason to get this is probably the classics catalog and the trials. It’s worth the $119 a year asking price.
What needs improvement
Information Architecture
I’ll start with the big one that needs to get fixed as quickly as possible, which is the information architecture of the service. If you don’t know the concept of IA, here is how it works – you organize your information in the most complete way to get your customer to where they want to go in the quickest and least complicated and confusing method. PS Plus Premium runs against the IA concept, though navigation is manageable, it can get confusing and frustrating.
While the initial top-level layout of the service is broken into beautiful categories, when you go into a category it gets incredibly IA unfriendly. For example, when you go into Classics Catalog the first thing you see is ‘View Games’. You click on that, and you go into the entire catalog of all the games. Everything from PS1 – PS3 is mixed into one giant list. The filter options are broken down into names (forward and backward alphabetically), release dates (old to new and vice-versa), and recently added. You cannot search the list by the system. That doesn’t seem like a big deal until you want to find God Hand on the PlayStation 2 but must scroll alphabetically through everything to see if it is there. It would be much easier to isolate PS2 and just search that list. What if you weren’t searching for anything particular and were curious to see what is from the PS2 days? Can’t do it, well not easily. This would also help when new material comes out, where you can see what system, the thing came out on. Most of the classic games don’t say PS1 or PS2, rather they have PS3 and above on them. Again, it’s confusing.
Let’s say that you want to isolate PS2, the service does that, but it does that in a less-than-obvious way. Instead of hitting ‘View Games’, you can scroll down when you initially get into Classics Catalog and find that there are separate horizontal categories that break down the systems into groups. The first group consists of PSP, PS1, and PS2. The second group is Remasters (that is odd but roll with it). The last group is PlayStation 3 games. I had no idea these categories existed on the front page and the second category is just a weird one to include. It seems like a space filler.
Anyway, instead of having a ‘View Games’ at the beginning of this CC page, why not just have giant blocks that isolate each category (PSP, PS1, PS2, and PS3), and then have a block at the end with a ‘View All Classic Games’. It seems it would not only be more pleasing to the eye, but it would seem more organized and would not violate the IA concept. Get your customer what they want as fast as you can. This is a simple solution that would do just that for gamers. The games need to have dual labels on them if they were brought back out on the PS3 and above. For example, if you have Star Wars Racer Revenge, it should have the PS1 (original release) and PS4 (later re-release) on it. Having those tags will allow gamers to categorize where games originally came from in the PlayStation family. Again, this may not seem important, but having that option makes it easily searchable, plus it’s nice to see where the game was born.
I get that this might seem like some petty complaint, but it isn’t. You always want to deliver the goods to customers as quickly and less frustrating as possible. When people put money and faith into your service, you want to keep them coming back for more without creating the dread of being lost in a sea of games. The only reason I can think of Sony doing what they did with their classic game catalog is that maybe they haven’t been able to populate some categories more than others. For example, I’m sure the PSP category is skimpy in comparison to the PS1-PS3. When you give people confidence that these categories will grow, and we all know the extensive library of all these systems, including the PSP, then they will forgive the lite portions at launch. The organization of information is far more important than the amount of content (yes, content is king – but if people can’t find it, then there will be a revolution). If I was a betting man, I would say this all gets corrected by December.
Streaming Dream
Let me start by saying, this isn’t a Sony issue. This is a United States issue. Shelve that so that we can come back to it in a moment.
Okay, so streaming games over a wireless network is never a good idea. You will be disappointed about it. Years ago, when I first tested out PS Now, I ran into the issue that there just isn’t enough ‘umph’ from my ISP (even on a gigabit network) to stream a game wirelessly without a hitch. When I moved to Maryland this past year, I signed up for the best and brightest service, acquired a mesh network router, fired up my Luna subscription, even after testing the network capabilities, and still found that streaming ran into lag. The only way to get the most out of your streaming is to have a gigabit network running true fiber-driven speed (up and down) and to hook your system via ethernet category 6 cable directly to your router. If you do that, then you have a nearly perfect chance to stream games without a problem. Case and point, when we got premium access, the first game I streamed was Motorstorm Apocalypse, and it streamed brilliantly. I think I have run into one issue during this entire first month trying to stream games, but 80-90% of my streaming has been beautiful because of hard wiring ethernet to my PlayStation 5. This is the only true way to get this to work more times than not. Again, this isn’t a Sony issue, rather this is something that all game streaming services are running into.
Now, about this United States thing, Internet Service Providers must do a better job to bring higher true speeds to the home for this game streaming deal to catch on properly. Giant nerds like me know how to handle these types of situations when it comes to adjusting tech to make streaming work better. I’ve known for years that ethernet is the only way to make this work. The common consumer that doesn’t deal with technology and doesn’t get mad that their ISP promises gig speeds but delivers only 500mbps down and 27mbps up isn’t going to know better. When the new ZLED from Samony comes out in 2023 and offers up a Game Pass app on it, if they don’t plug an ethernet cable into that television, then they’re going to be disappointed with the service. People will avoid said streaming solutions and the entire concept will die. The infrastructure in the United States and what ISPs deliver versus what they promise at a premium price needs to be changed. I know the current White House administration signed off last year on an Infrastructure Bill that is supposedly going to address the Internet access issue but upgrading and maintaining the best possible access to top speeds should be a priority of every ISP without a bill being signed. They’re simply not putting money into their product, and it seems like no one is complaining about it. Without a better structure, newer tech, and consistent speeds from ISPs, this country will fall behind when it comes to services like cloud streaming. Anyway, I could gripe about this all day and wonder where all my money goes that I pay monthly to my ISP (because I know how the inside of an ISP works), but until that voice gets bigger and louder, I know it’s going to do very little. Having said all of this, I do know that there are some ISPs out there that care about their product and treat customers right. The town I came from, Lexington, Kentucky, has a wonderful local company called QX.net that did its best to serve the city with speeds that outperformed the big ISP that moved in a little over a decade after QX set up shop. We need more QXs at a national level.
Anyway, streaming is possible for the most part, but wireless streaming is a pipedream right now. Prepare yourself to hook up an ethernet cable. You won’t be disappointed. Also, get the right router to push the most out of your modem. I do highly recommend a mesh router. I have an Orbi from Netgear. It gets the most out of the Verizon modem.
What works well
Aside from the two improvements, one that Sony can control and one that it can’t, I think the service is everything I thought it would be and a little bit more. I know as the months will roll on throughout 2022, there are going to be new additions to old games coming to the catalog. Having seen some added in the first month means they’re working on it more and more to bring a huge catalog to gamers. I’m hopeful for the future and will gladly keep paying premium prices to access old-school classics. Now, if they can squeeze in God Hand, I would super appreciate that…please, Sony and Capcom.
Beyond the classics, the ability to get some day-one freebies, such as Annapurna Interactive’s Stray, and a shitload of Sony story-driven games, such as Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding, makes the value of this service primo. I have a friend at work that was waiting for the possibility that GoT and DS was going to be included with the premium service so that he can just download them on day one (with everything else available). He downloaded two games that are at a minimum of $29.99 – $59.99 each, which, added together, nearly pay the cost of PS Plus Premium.
There’s so much content available on this service, plus items like trials and access to collections that it would be hard not to justify the cost versus return. It’s a good service that is probably going to grow quickly over the coming months.
Conclusion
Sony PlayStation’s PS Plus Premium is indeed a premium service that delivers on value. While eventually, I would love to download PS3 games instead of streaming them, having access to a large library of PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP games are incredible. It was a long time coming for the PlayStation brand. All they need to do now is improve how it’s all organized, figure out a way to create a PS3 emulator so that we can have a download option, and just keep bringing the content. The rest will take care of itself. As it stands, it’s a good start for this service.
