At GI Live in London, a games conference held by Gamesindustry.biz, Shuhei Yoshida, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s SIE Worldwide Studios and head of PlayStation’s indie game program, spoke about Sony’s approach to service improvement. PS Plus, especially as regards its top-of-the-range Extra version.
Unlike Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service, most proprietary Xbox games will be available on XGP at launch, but Yoshida said Sony still believes that “games should be released at full price when they are released.”
Previous versions of PS Plus had some games that included subscription services at launch, such as Rocket League and Jelly Bean, which Yoshida says really helped their success because they made these online multiplayer games fast. But the new multilevel PS Plus service will take a different path.
For developers and publishers, the added value of the service lies elsewhere, providing games with an additional revenue stream later in their life cycle, just like the movies, he explained.
“The new PSPlus has levels, it’s essentially like the old PS Plus, we still release two or three new games a month and the new Extra level has a catalog of hundreds of games for people to play.”
“The idea with Extra was that we wanted to help publishers with lifecycle management. I manage first party titles on PlayStation, so I know it’s like a movie: first in theaters, then it becomes pay-per-view, or joining a subscription service, or broadcasting it on TV for free, generates new revenue and reaches a wider audience each time “.
“Likewise, we believe that at launch, at full price, perhaps six months, three months or three years later, when game sales drop, the inclusion of PSPlus Extra as a service can help bring those games to life. to a new and wider audience. Some people may have missed these games when they came out, it is a great opportunity to generate word of mouth or, if there is a DLC or sequel, we can help increase interest in these games and make get to know the series to a wider audience.
“Therefore, we encourage publishers to use these services to manage the life cycle of each title.” At the end of the speech, he stated that the game subscription service “is still experimental for Sony at the moment”.
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