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What is PSN+ ?
PSN+. If you are a gamer or a parent of a gamer, listen up. June 29th is the official release date of the new PSN+ subscription service for the Playstation 3 Network.
Bottom line: PSN+ is the Playstation Networks new paid subscription plan. This, for those who do not know, is nothing new in the gaming world. Microsoft has had the Xbox Live paid subscription plan for many years. When Playstation 3 first came out and was offering the Playstation network at no charge I was excited. Then, when the prices of the Xbox Live subscription started plummeting, I was anxiously awaiting news that the entire idea of subscription gaming would be scrapped.
Those days are over. It seems like the extreme price drop for the XBox Live made the service even more popular and more or less established a baseline for what the gaming community and parents were willing to pay for a subscription service. Enter PSN+.
PSN+ will be priced in the US as followed: 3 months for $17.99 or you can get 1 year for $49.99. So, if you pay every 3 months, you’ll end up paying $71.96 for the entire year. Now, WHY the difference? Simple. It’s fairly obvious what the better deal is. But, here is the catch. Sony wants you to subscribe to the longer package deal from the get go and not even think about the measly 3 month plan.
And here, is why:
If you subscribe to the 3 month plan for $17.99 at first, but then hate the whole concept of PSN+, you are only committed to 3 months and then you can go back to using the free service after your 3 months is up. Good or bad, you are only out $17.99 in the end.
Now, if you subscribe to the yearly plan, you are locked in for 12 months. If you only “kind of” like the service, you’ll use it anyway, since you paid $49.99 for it, consequently, you will integrate some subscription only perk into your gaming life, even if it’s just a small way… For example, one of the perks of PSN+ is a monthly free game. The thing is with the monthly free game, is that it’s free as long as you are a subscriber to PSN+. If you cancel your service, any game that was offered through the monthly free game perk that you had downloaded, would be gone. Now, at the end of the 12 months, regardless of how much you liked or disliked the PSN+ service, you’ll most likely renew again because of those little habits ( or free games.. ) you established that first subscription year. Which results in… a customer for life. With this yearly plan, Sony gains an additional $32 per customer.
Evil geniuses over there at Sony…
Now to get to the details. PSN+ offers the following perks with my comments in ( ):
- Free monthly PSN games, which MUST be downloaded the month they are offered or you miss out. Along with minis and PS1 classic games. ( Again, these games are only usable if you are a CURRENT subscriber and the games are chosen for you, so if it’s a sports game and you don’t play those you’re stuck with it… )
- Free monthly dynamic themes, premium avatars, premium game elements/add-ons. These perks may be kept forever. ( If you are into decorating your PSN interface, you will be thrilled… )
- An additional discount of 20% to 50% off of select content at the Playstation Network Store. ( Great discount, although again, the games that will have the discount are chosen for you.. )
- First access to selected demos and beta trials. ( Interesting, but not worth one penny IMO )
- Every month, you can download full games and try them out for a period of time and after the game trial is complete, if you purchase the game you can carry on where you left off. ( Essentially, try before you buy. With around an hour of game play included in the demo, I think this is a great feature, but I believe it should be offered to everyone )
- The ability to set your PS3 to wake up from standby at any time of the day or night, download and install any game updates for the games you own. ( This is not a feature I’d brag about offering, because we all know how long these updates can take, but to offer this option “if you fork over your cash” isn’t very tasteful to me )
My advice. WAIT. Even though I am a HUGE gamer and I am very excited to try PSN+ — I am going to wait. I will be reading reviews and watching the stability of the network as a whole, because I can guarantee there will be “bugs” galore as this all rolls out. Also, I want to see what games are offered for free, will they be new titles or ones that were originally released a year ago? What types of games will be discounted? Personally, those answers will be the deciding factor for me.
And of course, check back to see the latest deals on PSN+ right here from the Consumer Ninja ;)
