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PlayStation confident in PS Plus strategy as it readies PS5 game streaming

Head of subscriptions Nick Maguire tells us the service has been a hit, highlighting stats such as 'a billion hours of gameplay since that catalogue launched'. He also says that users of the service are, on average, spending seven times as much time on PS Plus than they did with PlayStation Now in the year prior to launch.

Maguire highlights some standout titles in the service, including Dead By Daylight, The Legend of Dragoon, Rainbow Six: Siege and, of course, the indie game Stray, which launched day and date in the service in July.

"Stray has brought in the highest number of players that have accessed that title over the first 12 months," Maguire says. "And Ghost of Tsushima has brought in the highest number of hours of gameplay. People have really stuck around and really invested in that game. That goes to the strength of our PS Studios titles, which have seen great engagement and lots of excitement.

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gamesindustry.biz
Tacoboto90d ago

One thing I wish for from either Xbox or PlayStation on their services would be to let me play a disc game without needing the disc in after I install it.

Idk how the logistics could work to prevent soft-piracy like disc sharing and playing at the same time (I.e. if there's an ID for the disc their servers can track and you have to be online), but I think of how nice a feature that would be every now and then.

Horizon for example - it's been a year and my disc is put away in storage. Burning Shores came out and HFW being on PS+ now meant I just bought the DLC on my phone, and played it a few minutes later, no need to disc swap out with Hogwarts Legacy.

It would be a very For-the-Players move and, imo, would encourage both physical purchases and maintaining a concurrent subscription. A disc for the collection with the ease of digital.

crazyCoconuts90d ago

I'm guessing mass production of discs would be quite a bit more complicated if they had to alter some part of the data to embed a unique id on each one. Also, then to prevent piracy the console would have to make an online call to a central server to verify the code hasn't been "redeemed" every time you play, so now you have an always online requirement. I'm sure they'd rather us disc users just give up and buy digital in the end...

Tacoboto90d ago

Yeah, thinking about the logistics makes it messy once you go more than one layer deep.

It's unfortunate that games are both the most expensive digital entertainment medium and the least interoperable/shareable.

You can burn a CD and forever save and copy those MP3s.
Buying a DVD since 2007 or so, you get the Digital Copy code for free! That was fractured at first - Platform A, Platform B, "iTunes", but now it's been centralized to this Movies Unlimited platform that can be linked to any major movie download store and some movies receive free enhancements - Apple TV grants me 4K Dolby Vision access to my 2008 The Dark Knight. Last year's The Batman came with a Download Code + 4K Blu Ray + Regular Blu Ray. Before 4K Blu Rays, we'd get the DVD version alongside the regular Blu Ray.

The closest thing we've had to a concept like Movies Unlimited is Xbox Play Anywhere (especially combined with Smart Delivery), but that's restricted to just one ecosystem and only for your digital purchases... and requires using the Xbox PC app.

Slipping in a nice download code with the disc (since we don't even get manuals anymore) would've made the bump to $70 very welcome I think. That's kind of what happened with movies - as Blu Rays came out, prices increased, but value actually did too because every purchase was almost like two copies.

andy8590d ago

It'd mean you could never sell a disc I assume though and that isn't the way

Tacoboto90d ago

In my thinking...

The disc user can do whatever offline with it. The PSN (or whatever service) account "linked" to it would have the disc-less access revoked if the disc is ever detected online on another account without the need to alert or notify the current user. It's less of the disc being "tied" to your account (making reselling unimpacted), but rather - PSN would grant you a digital license until it becomes known you're a sharer.

With it as a perk of the service, they can apply any restrictions they'd like - insert the disc again after a month, unable to play discless offline, Max Limit of N "Expanded Access" titles at a time.

darthv7290d ago

Technically... you can do that. If you install a disc game, and that game is also on game pass (and you happen to be a GP member) you can then play the game without the disc. I believe Sony has recently done the same thing. It used to be on PS that disc games were seen as different than digital ones of the same title. I believe it was a very recent update that they dropped the separate installs and now just see the data as the same. They just verify your license and it lets you play the games without disc if they were also made available in PS+

I know on XB, the game data is seen as the same regardless of disc or digital. I remember going to play Quantum Break and it showed the GP logo on it on my screen so I clicked and sure enough it started playing. I had installed it from disc like a couple weeks before joining GPU. Its been rather cool when i can install a game from GP and that game is later removed, i can pop in my disc and continue playing and vice versa.

Tacoboto90d ago

You're right about the first paragraph - it was only recently changed by Sony. All I had to do for my disc Horizon install to get it playable was to go to the PS Store listing and tap Add to Library. Want to say that was a February or March random thing in addition to the ever-stabling of the PS5 firmware lol.

One game I know of on GP that doesn't treat save data equally is The Outer Worlds. It is the rare game that was GP Day One, without Xbox Play Anywhere support and therefore has no shared data between PC and Xbox. Only one I've come across like that, points for irony of the developer being MS owned now.

crazyCoconuts90d ago

""I was personally surprised that Premium has ended up being a bigger share of the base than Extra. We all thought that Extra would be where the majority of people went to first, but actually Premium has been more popular and bigger," he reveals.
I didn't expect that...

GhostScholar90d ago

The only two problems I have are

1. They should be putting more ps1 and ps2 games in the service
2. There’s no incentive to have premium really. Essential is just as good for less money.

gold_drake90d ago (Edited 90d ago )

After playing wildarms and most of the ps1 games, i whole heartily disagree

but people should be subbing (or not) what they can afford.

shinoff218389d ago

I played some of legend or dragoon and some wild arms and was perfectly fine. I agree more ps1 and ps2 games are needed. There thousands.

DeusFever89d ago

"Stray has brought in the highest number of players that have accessed that title over the first 12 months,“

What a great game. Quality over quantity.