Sony was surely one of the first to give away games every month. That was back in the days of the PS3, when their annual/monthly subscription service would arrive promptly every 30 days with a couple or three titles that we could add for free to our library. They weren’t rabid news, but they were mostly recognized developments from major companies. That with the new PlayStation Plus has given a complete overturn to its previous philosophy.
The influence of Game Pass
That move by Sony on PS3 and later on PS Vita forced Microsoft to react and add its Games with Gold , which was more or less the same but with smaller titles. And that’s how we stayed until 2017, when the Redmond people got a light bulb and decided to bring the Netflix format to video games. Flat rate and enjoy an increasing number of new features.
And over time, in addition to a more than interesting catalog background, exclusives, first party games or third-party novelties arrived that were already on sale within Xbox Game Pass from the first minute. That was one of the best decisions that North Americans could make for their users (we don’t know if it was also for business) because it made the community perceive the subscription as a highly valuable alternative.
And we come to the present. Sony says that the Game Pass formula doesn’t interest it that much , especially when it comes to exclusives, and that carrying games from the first day of its launch isn’t something that obsesses it either. Until you see things like the one that just happened a few hours ago with one of those news that comes to PlayStation Plus every month.
Let it be clear that it is a novelty
And it is that the great contradiction of all this is that the apparent indifference with which Sony treats Microsoft on account of Xbox Game Pass has cracked a bit given what happened recently, with the arrival of DKO Divine Knockout on PlayStation Plus, which has been marked within the service itself with an identifier that leaves no doubt that it is a “Launch day 1”. As Stray already was last summer.
That Sony has decided to highlight and value the fact that a game that is a complete novelty has just arrived on PlayStation Plus says a lot about how the Japanese unconsciously look more than they would like in the direction of Xbox Game Pass, and that although it is certain that in the medium term we will not see a Game of War Ragnarok arrive and premiere on the subscription service, there is no doubt that little by little they will end up doing it. Some better and some worse, but that list of day one releases will not stop growing.
And all while Sony wants to blow up Microsoft’s purchase of Activision-Blizzard. Do you see a future with a very weakened PlayStation empire?