Had a few spare moments at work of late, so, after seeing that people were getting more and more dissatisfied with Plus (I appreciate that the latest offerings have been good but I started this a while back) I decided to have a look at whether it has actually gotten worse, or are we all just big babies.

First, some caveats:

· This is looking at Plus in its current form, where it’s mandatory for playing games online. I’ve not looked at the old PS3 heyday.

· All information pertaining to the value of the games is based on the UK PS Store, as that is where I’m from.

· All information relating to the age of the games at the time of hitting Plus is based on the dates they were released in the UK. Although in the main these will be the same across regions, it may not always be the case.

· When listing Platform, anything that was cross-buy has only its most recent console listed.

RIGHT, LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT HOW THE VALUE OF THE GAMES HAS CHANGED OVER TIME…

I’ve based the value of the games, not on the PS Store list price, but on the best available price prior to them being listed on plus. For example, this month we were given Bioshock: The Collection; the PS store list price of this is currently £44.99, however, on June 29th last year, you could pick it up for £7.39 – this is the value I have attributed to the game.

Below is a graph showing the change in the total “value” of the PS Plus offerings. This is done with a 3pt Moving Average and a Trendline. As you can see - whilst there are months that are exceptions to the rule, the general trend is downwards, moving from £75.83 to £17.76 between November 2013 and Today.

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MA - Total Value of Games by Month

PLAYSTATION PLUS HEADLINE FIGURES

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Highest Value Month:

December 2014 - £122.94

· Injustice: Gods Among Us PS4

· Secret Ponchos PS4

· Titan Attacks! PS4

· Hitman HD Trilogy PS3

· Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut PS3

· Final Horizon Vita

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Highest Value Month Since The Price Increase of August 2017

June 2018 - £67.43

· XCOM 2 PS4

· Trials Fusion PS4

· Call of Duty Black Ops 3 PS4 (E3 Bonus)

· Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier PS3

· Zombie Driver HD: Complete Edition PS3

· Squares Vita

· Atomic Ninjas PS3

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Highest Value Month Since Shelving Multiplatform Titles

September 2019 - £49.98

· Darksiders III

· Batman: Arkham Knight

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Golden Duck Award For The Worst Month Of Plus:

May 2019 - £11.28

· What Remains of Edith Finch (£7.99)

· Overcooked (£3.29)

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AVERAGES AVERAGES AVERAGES

Average Individual Game Value Since PS4 Launch - £9.25

Average Individual Game Value Pre August 2017 - £10.02

Average Individual Game Value September 2017-February 2019 - £7.18

Average Individual Game Value March 2019-Present - £11.25

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This shows a few things.

· From the PS4 launch until the price increase, the offerings were comparatively high value against the average, and the amount of games we received meant that the total value was also high – this is probably when the value of Plus was at its best.

· After the Price increase, the quality of the service really did take a hit. Not only were we paying more, the games were actually “cheaper”. However, we did still receive a larger amount of games – nonetheless, this is arguably Plus at its worst value.

· Since cutting the other platform titles last year, the implied quality of the games (based on price) is the best it has ever been. The average is still higher despite 3 of the lowest value months on record (July 19, December 19 and January 20) all falling within this 12 month period. Removing these months would bring the average game value up to £12.89 – a 79% increase on the value of games prior to the cull!

We’re getting less games, that’s undeniable; but the games, on paper, should be better offerings. Realistically, you can probably see this is the case having a glance over the last 12 months. Yes, there’s been some absolute catastrophes (see above), but in the main it’s been a good selection.

If you’ve been subscribing for a few years, none of this will be a surprise, but at least you’re not imagining it.

Thinking about this, I might pick up the Metacritic ratings and break it down again – are we actually getting more quality titles now?

GAMES RELEASING STRAIGHT TO PLUS

When the PS4 released it was not uncommon to see games released straight to Plus, possibly with Sony doing their best to push it to the masses. I’m sure it’s not gone unnoticed but this is a practice that we haven’t seen since July 2017 when “That’s You!” was released. Nonetheless, let’s take a look…admittedly there’s not too much to see here, but we did seem to have it pretty good at the beginning.

Weirdly though – this coincides, to the month, with the price increase.

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Games Straight to Plus.

Well, I’ve got tired of typing and I’m sure most are long tired of reading…I do have Part 2 prepped and ready, branching from the “Straight to Plus” section above and looking at how recent the game offerings are. I’m also (as a result of writing this) going to look at the ratings of the games to see if they’ve gotten worse…or worse and then better again as I’ve theorized above.

Until next time…

TL;DR – It’s not just you, Plus has gotten worse but it’s slowly on the rebound.

**Anyone after the raw data for anything drop me a PM and I’ll see what I can do**